THE    RESTORATION    OF   TRADE 
UNION   CONDITIONS 


* 


THE  RESTORATION 

OF  TRADE  UNION 

CONDITIONS 


BY 

SIDNEY  WEBB 


•Hew 
B.   W.   HUEBSCH 

MCMXVII 


PRINTED  IN  ENGLAND 


C- 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.  THE  SUSPENSION  OF  THE  CONDITIONS       7 
II.  THE  NATION'S  PLEDGE        .        .        .21 

III.  THE  DANGER  OF  A  SHAM  RESTORATION    46 

IV.  WANTED— A  NEW  SETTLEMENT  .        .     66 

V.  THE     FIVE     POINTS     OF    THE    NEW 

CHARTER 79 

APPENDIX:  BIBLIOGRAPHY   .  .  107 


380J90 


CHAPTER  I 

THE  SUSPENSION  OF  THE 
CONDITIONS 

IN  the  increasing  stress  of  inter- 
national competition,  much  will 
depend  for  this  country  on  the 
rapidity  and  the  smoothness  with 
which  our  industries  can  resume  their 
normal  work.  If  this  resumption  is 
hampered  by  ill-feeling  and  suspicion 
between  employers  and  workmen — 
still  more,  if  it  is  delayed  by  indus- 
trial war — the  loss  to  the  commu- 
nity will  be  incalculable.  A  grave 
peril  hangs  over  the  nation  on  the 
coming  of  peace.  Second  only  in 
urgency  to  the  problem  of  demobili- 
zation is  the  problem  of  the  restora- 
tion of  what  are  called  Trade  Union 
conditions.  Unless  this  most  difficult 
position  is  candidly  faced  in  all  its 
7 


RESTORATION  OF  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

aspects,  by  the  Trade  Unions  as  well  as 
by  the  employers,  and  above  all  by 
the  Government,  before  the  war  has 
come  to  an  end,  and  unless  a  solu- 
tion is  timely  found  which  all  parties 
will  accept,  and  which  will  not  be 
prejudicial  to  the  nation's  industrial 
development,  there  is  serious  danger, 
throughout  the  whole  of  the  engi- 
neering and  some  other  trades,  of 
calamitous  industrial  strife. 


THE  TRADE  UNION  NETWORK. 

The  outbreak  of  war  found  the  Brit- 
ish engineering,  and,  indeed,  most  other 
manufacturing  industries,  carried  on 
under  a  complicated  network  of  usages 
and  regulations,  differing  from  district 
to  district,  and  often  from  establishment 
to  establishment.  These  customs  and 
rules  had  been  built  up  during  several 
generations,  with  the  more  or  less  ex- 
plicit acquiescence  of  the  employers. 
They  were  sometimes  embodied  in 
8 


THE  SUSPENSION  OF  THE  CONDITIONS 

written  codes  or  agreements,  drawn 
up  and  signed  by  Trade  Unions  and 
Employers'  Associations,  or  by  par- 
ticular employers  for  the  conduct  of 
their  own  establishments.  Sometimes 
they  were  recited  in  Trade  Union 
books  of  rules,  known  to  the  em- 
ployers, or  in  local  working  rules  to 
which  the  employers  of  the  district 
had  agreed.  Very  often,  however, 
many  of  the  usages  and  customs 
were  not  embodied  in  any  written 
document,  and  existed  independently 
of  any  Trade  Union ;  arising,  in  fact, 
among  workmen  who  were  non-union- 
ist quite  as  much  as  among  Trade 
Unionists,  and  representing,  in  an 
effective  way,  the  spontaneous  public 
opinion  of  the  workshop. 

This  network  of  rules  and  agree- 
ments, usages,  and  customs  was  more 
extensive  than  is  usually  realized.1 

1  The  most  extensive  collections  of  Trade 
Union   rules   and  other  documents   are  those 
at   (1)  the   Fabian   Research  Department,    25 
9 


&ESTO&ATION  OF  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

It  covered  different  points  in  different 
trades,  and  often  in  different  districts 
of  the  same  trade.  Taking  the  net- 
work as  a  whole,  and  at  its  widest, 
it  embraced  not  only  the  standard 
rates  of  wages,  and  the  length  of  the 
normal  working  day,  together  with 
the  arrangements  for  overtime,  night- 
work,  Sunday  duty,  mealtimes,  and 
holidays,  but  also  the  exact  classes 
of  operatives  (apprenticed  or  skilled, 
semi-skilled  or  unskilled,  labourers  or 
women)  to  be  engaged  or  not  to  be 
engaged  for  various  kinds  of  work, 
upon  particular  processes,  or  with 
different  types  of  machine ;  whether 
non-unionists  should  be  employed 
at  all ;  what  processes  should  be 
employed  for  particular  tasks  ; 
what  machines  should  be  used  for 

Tothill  Street,  Westminster,  which  will  supply 
information  to  any  inquirer ;  and  (2)  the 
British  Library  of  Political  Science  at  the 
London  School  of  Economics,  Clare  Market, 
Kingsway,  W.C. 

10 


THE  SUSPENSION  OP  THE  CONDITIONS 

particular  jobs;  how  the  machines  should 
be  placed  in  relation  to  each  other, 
and  the  speed  at  which  they  should 
be  worked ;  whether  one  operative 
should  complete  a  whole  job,  or 
attend  only  to  one  machine,  or  form 
part  of  a  team  of  specialized  opera- 
tives each  doing  a  different  process; 
what  wages,  if  any,  sho-ild  be  paid 
in  the  intervals  between  jobs,  or  whilst 
waiting  for  material,  and  what  notice 
of  termination  of  engagement  should 
be  given;  whether  boys  or  girls  or 
young  persons  should  be  employed 
at  all,  or  in  what  processes  or  with 
what  machines,  or  in  what  proportion 
to  the  adult  workmen ;  whether  the 
remuneration  should  be  by  time  or 
by  the  piece,  and  under  what  condi- 
tions, at  what  rates  and  with  what 
allowances  ;  and — perhaps  where  it 
prevailed  most  severely  criticized  of 
all,  but  by  no  means  universally 
existing — what  amount  of  output  by 
each  operative  should  be  considered 
11 


RESTORATION  OF  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

a  fair  day's  work,  not  to  be  con- 
siderably exceeded  under  penalty  of 
the  serious  displeasure  of  the  work- 
shop. 


ADVANTAGES  OF  THE  NETWORK. 

To  their  own  particular  network  of 
rules  and  customs  each  set  of  work- 
men attached  enormous  importance — 
an  importance  so  great  that  employers 
had  often  found  it  desirable  to  ac- 
quiesce in  or  even  explicitly  to  agree 
to  its  continuance  in  order  to  arrive 
at  any  agreement  as  to  rates  of  wages. 
Nor  was  the  workmen's  attachment 
to  their  customary  usages  and  rules 
entirely  unreasonable ;  or,  as  the 
political  economists  would  now  say, 
without  some  economic  justification. 
These  conditions,  as  the  workmen 
held,  formed  an  essential  part  of  their 
individual  contracts  for  service.  What 
the  employer  paid  for  was  their 
labour  exercised  under  these  conditions. 
12 


THE   SUSPENSION   OF  THE   CONDITIONS 

Invidious  as  some  of  them  might  appear 
to  persons  without  the  wage-earner's 
knowledge,  they  had  been  found  by 
experience,  so  it  seemed  to  the  men, 
to  be  indispensable  safeguards  of  the 
customary  rate  of  wages — necessary 
defences  against  a  progressive  degra- 
dation of  their  standard  of  life. 

Nor  was  the  existence  of  such  a 
network  of  usages  altogether  detri- 
mental or  distasteful  to  the  employer 
doing  a  steady-going  business  in  quiet 
times.  It  may  be  that  it  prevented 
the  greatest  possible  output.  Some 
managers  might  resent  this  or  that 
rule  or  custom,  or  chafe  against  this 
or  that  restriction  on  their  autocracy. 
The  capitalist  eager  to  "  Americanize  " 
his  workshop  might  deplore  the  re- 
strictions thus  placed  on  production 
as  uneconomic.  But  the  typical  Eng- 
lish employer  found  that  he  was  not 
doing  so  badly.  He  knew  what  to 
expect  from  his  factory.  Observance  of 
the  usages  made  for  smooth  running. 
13 


RESTORATION  OF  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

Just  as  the  weight  of  the  atmo- 
sphere is  not  felt  as  pressure,  the 
long-continued  customs  of  establish- 
ment that  sought  no  change  some- 
times failed  even  to  reach  the 
employer's  consciousness.  He  was 
often  unaware  of  their  existence. 

Suddenly  came  the  war,  and  the 
need  for  an  enormous  increase  of  pro- 
duction not  only  of  shells  but  of  all 
that  war  consumes  ;  the  insistence  by 
the  War  Office  and  the  Admiralty 
on  the  immediate  supply  of  things 
which  had  not  hitherto  been  made ; 
the  plain  need  of  using  every  kind  of 
factory,  whatever  may  have  been  its 
previous  product,  in  the  new  and 
gigantic  task ;  and,  at  the  same  time, 
the  absorption  into  the  Army  of  many 
thousands  of  the  men  who  had  hither- 
to done  the  work  of  the  kind  now 
required. 


14 


THE  SUSPENSION  OF  THE  CONDITIONS 

WAR  CHANGES. 

To  meet  the  need  all  sorts  of 
changes  had  to  be  made — factories 
had  to  be  extended  or  adapted,  new 
and  additional  machinery  had  to  be 
introduced,  processes  had  to  be 
changed,  the  relation  of  the  operative 
to  the  machine  had  often  to  be 
revolutionized,  a  great  development 
of  standardized  or  repetition  work 
replaced  the  series  of  slightly  differing 
tasks  to  which  the  skilled  mechanic 
had  hitherto  been  set  ;  and,  as  the 
demand  grew,  fresh  classes  of  opera- 
tives had  to  be  brought  in,  non- 
unionists,  unapprenticed  men,  semi- 
skilled men,  labourers,  boys,  even 
women  and  girls.  The  network  of 
agreements  and  usages,  rules  and 
customs  stood  everywhere  in  the  way 
of  these  industrial  transformations. 
What  might  be  unobjectionable  or 
even  mutually  serviceable  in  peace 
was  obviously  not  suitable  for  the 
16 


RESTORATION  OF  TRADE   UNION  CONDITIONS 

exigencies  of  war.  It  was  not  a  time 
for  mere  revision,  or  for  any  nicely 
calculated  less  or  more.  The  Trade 
Unions — which  were  the  only  bodies 
with  whom  negotiations  could  be 
carried  on,  although  the  tens  of 
thousands  of  non-unionists  were 
equally  concerned — were  accordingly 
asked  by  the  Government,  in  con- 
junction with  the  Engineering  Em- 
ployers' Federation,  to  consent,  for 
the  duration  of  the  war,  at  one  blow 
to  give  up  not  this  or  that  Trade 
Union  rule  or  custom,  but  any  part 
of  the  network  which  any  employer 
thought  was  in  any  way  interfering 
with  the  utmost  possible  production. 
It  must  be  remembered  that  by  no 
means  the  whole  of  the  network  has 
been  given  up.  What  the  Engineer- 
ing Employers'  Federation  were 
specially  concerned  about,  as  frankly 
explained  in  their  proposals  of  Novem- 
ber 1914,  was  to  get  complete  free- 
dom for  each  employer  to  "  dilute " 
16 


THE  SUSPENSION  OF  THE  CONDITIONS 

labour  by  setting  one  or  two  skilled 
mechanics  to  help  and  direct  a  score 
of  less  skilled  workers  ;  to  break  up 
fthe  jobs  so  as  to  bring  them  within 
the  capacity  of  semi-skilled  workers ; 
to  introduce  automatic  machinery  and 
engage  non-unionists  and  unappren- 
ticed  men,  labourers,  and  women  ;  to 
work,  if  need  be,  an  unlimited  number 
of  hours  seven  days  a  week,  without 
regard  for  Factory  Acts  or  holidays ; 
to  substitute  for  the  standard  time 
rates  whatever  piecework  or  bonus 
systems  they  found  convenient;  and, 
above  all,  so  to  speed  up  the  machin- 
ery and  abrogate  all  customary  limi- 
tations on  individual  output  as  to  get 
lie  very  maximum  of  production. 

LABOUR'S  SACRIFICE. 

Upon   the    strong  appeal   made   by 
the    Government    the   Trade   Unions, 
vdthout  a  single  exception,  agreed  to 
:lo  what  the  national  interest  required. 
17  B 


RESTORATION  OF  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

It  was  not  a  matter  of  bargain  with 
this  or  that  union  only  with  which 
special  terms  as  to  waiving  the  exact 
restoration  of  the  conditions  might 
conceivably  now  be  arranged.  Prac- 
tically the  whole  world  of  Labour  was 
concerned.  The  terms  offered  by  the 
Government  were  accepted,  on  behalf 
of  Labour  as  a  whole,  by  the  Par- 
liamentary Committee  of  the  Trades 
Union  Congress  and  the  Management 
Committee  of  the  General  Federation 
of  Trade  Unions,  by  the  Federation 
of  Engineering  and  Shipbuilding 
Trades,  the  Amalgamated  Society  of 
Engineers,  and  half  a  dozen  other 
engineering  unions,  by  the  Shipyard 
Trades'  Agreement  Committee  and 
the  main  shipbuilding  unions,  by  the 
National  Union  of  Railwayman  and 
the  Transport  Workers'  Federation, 
by  the  General  Union  of  Textile 
Workers  and  the  National  Union  of 
Boot  and  Shoe  Operatives,  by  the 
Furnishing  Trades  Association  and 
18 


THE  SUSPENSION  OP  THE  CONDITIONS 

the  half  a  dozen  principal  wood- 
working unions,  by  the  British  Steel 
Smelters  and  other  metal  unions,  and 
by  the  three  principal  unions  repre- 
senting over  a  quarter  of  a  million 
labourers  and  nondescript  workers. 
All  these  organizations  "placed  on 
one  side,"  said  a  grateful  Minister  of 
Munitions  eighteen  months  later, 

the  whole  armour  of  Trade  Union  regu- 
lations upon  which  they  had  hitherto 
relied.  For  the  weapons  slowly  forged 
during  long  years  of  struggle  .  .  .  directly 
or  indirectly,  might  have  tended  to  reduce 
the  output  during  the  war.  The  Gov- 
ernment asked  Labour  to  put  all  these 
on  one  side.  It  was  a  great  deal  to  ask. 
I  doubt  if  any  community  has  ever  been 
asked  for  greater  sacrifices,  but  with  a 
loyalty  and  statesmanship  which  cannot 
be  overestimated  the  request  was  readily 
granted.  The  Trade  Unions  required,  and 
they  were  right  to  require,  a  scrupulous 
record  and  recognition  of  what  they  were 
conceding.  It  was  promised  to  them  as 
a  right,  but  they  will  receive  more,  not 
19 


[RESTORATION  OF  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

only  the  restoration  of  the  system  they 
temporarily  abandoned,  but  the  grati- 
tude of  the  Army  and  the  nation.  (Mr. 
Montagu  in  the  House  of  Commons, 
August  15,  1916.) 

It  is  only  just  that  the  magnitude 
of  the  sacrifice  made  by  organized 
labour  should  be  remembered.  But 
its  very  magnitude  now  increases  the 
national  difficulty. 


20 


CHAPTER  II 
THE  NATION'S  PLEDGE 

THE  abrogation  of  the  Trade 
Union  rules  and  workshop  cus- 
toms was  required  only  for  the 
duration  of  the  war.  The  most  ex- 
plicit pledges  were  given,  not  once,  but 
repeatedly ;  not  to  any  particular  Trade 
Union  but  to  the  Labour  movement 
us  a  whole ;  not  only  by  one  Minister 
only  but  by  many,  representing  all 
sections  of  the  Coalition  Government ; 
and  not  by  the  Government  alone  but 
also  by  the  Engineering  Employers' 
Federation,  and  by  innumerable  em- 
ployers individually  —  that  whatever 
rules  and  practices  were  thus  laid 
aside  should  be  restored  at  the  con- 
clusion of  the  war. 

So   completely  was  this  understood 
that     provision    was    made    that    the 
21 


EESTOKATION  OF  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

employer  should  place  officially  on 
record  all  the  changes  in  working  con- 
ditions that  he  might  make  during 
the  war.  But  the  restoration  was  not 
made  dependent  on  the  record,  the 
completeness  of  which  the  Trade  Unions 
were  given  no  opportunity  of  verify- 
ing ;  nor  was  the  pledge  in  any  way 
limited  to  a  restoration  of  the  changes 
that  the  employer  might  choose  to 
record.  The  pledge  was  complete  and 
unconditional  that  the  employer  should 
in  every  case  (to  use  the  words  of  the 
important  Shells  and  Fuses  Agree- 
ment of  March  5,  1915)  "  reinstate 
the  working  conditions  of  his  factory 
on  the  pre-war  basis."  Nor  was  the 
pledge  limited  to  a  restoration  of  con- 
ditions embodied  in  documents ;  what- 
ever had  been  actually  practised, 
whether  with  the  consent  of  the 
employer  or  not,  was  to  be  reinstated. 
"Any  departure  during  the  war," 
said  the  Treasury  Agreement  of  March 
19,  1915,  "from  the  practice  ruling  in 
22 


THE   NATION'S  PLEDGE 

our  workshops,  shipyards,  and  other 
industries  prior  to  the  war  shall  only 
be  for  the  period  of  the  war."  This 
was  specifically  agreed  to  by  every 
employer  doing  any  Government  work, 
for  (as  Mr.  Henderson  told  the  House 
of  Commons  on  July  1,  1915)  it  was 
"made  a  condition  of  Government 
contracts  "  from  March  1915  onwards. 


ABSOLUTE  RESTORATION. 

The  pledge  of  the  restoration  was 
not  conditional,  as  has  since  been 
suggested  in  some  quarters,  on  restora- 
tion being  eventually  asked  for,  or 
insisted  on,  by  the  Labour  movement, 
or  by  any  particular  Trade  Union  or 
workman  after  the  war.  The  promise 
of  restoration  was  embodied  as  com- 
plete and  without  reservation,  un- 
conditional and  absolute,  irrespective 
of  the  desires  of  any  Trade  Union,  in 
the  Munitions  of  War  Act,  1915, 
where  any  failure  on  the  part  of  any 
23 


RESTORATION  OF  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

employer  to  carry  it  into  effect  was 
made,  not  a  matter  of  contractual 
obligation  which  might  be  waived  by 
the  other  party,  but  a  criminal  offence, 
punishable  in  the  Munitions  Tribunals 
by  a  fine  to  the  Crown  for  each  day 
or  part  of  a  day  that  the  failure  con- 
tinued, no  condition  or  excuse  or 
extenuation  or  waiver  being  provided 
for.  The  Munitions  of  War  Amend- 
ment Act,  1916,  specifically  repeated 
the  same  pledge  with  regard  to  the 
introduction,  during  the  war,  of  non- 
union labour  "into  any  class  of  work 
in  a  controlled  establishment  in  which 
it  was  the  practice  prior  to  the  war 
to  employ  union  labour  exclusively.'* 
A  similar  pledge  was  given  with  regard 
to  the  Royal  arsenals  and  dockyards. 
The  Government  as  an  employer  is 
technically  not  bound  by  the  Munitions 
Acts,  but  the  Prime  Minister  expressly 
promised,  without  condition  or  reserve, 
that,  "  subject  to  exceptional  cases, 
the  spirit  of  the  Act  should  be  observed 
24 


THE  NATION'S  PLEDGE 

by  Government  Departments  "  (House 
of  Commons,  August  21,  1916).  In 
short,  as  Mr.  Lloyd  George  said  on 
June  28,  1915,  the  abrogation  "during 
the  war  "  was  agreed 

on  the  honour  and  pledge  of  the  nation 
that  things  would  be  restored  exactly 
to  the  position  they  were  in  before  the 
suspension  'of  all  these  restrictions  and 
practices  that  interfere  with  the  increase 
of  the  output  of  war  materials. 

(House  of  Commons,  June  23,  1915.) 
We  promised,  said  the  present  Prime 
Minister  to  the  Trade  Union  Congress 
on  September  9,  1915, 

that  we  would  give  a  guarantee  that 
at  the  end  of  the  war  the  pre-war  con- 
ditions would  be  restored.  How  have 
we  done  that?  We  have  done  it,  not 
merely  by  solemn  declarations  on  the 
part  of  the  Government,  but  we  have 
embodied  them  in  an  Act  of  Parliament. 
We  have  a  statutory  guarantee  carried 
unanimously  by  Parliament,  by  men 
25 


RESTORATION  OF  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

of  all  parties  ...  all  sorts  and  con- 
ditions of  men.  They  are  all  in  it,  and 
they  are  all  committed  to  that  guar- 
antee. 

It  is  this  solemn  national  pledge, 
given  absolutely  and  unconditionally 
and  not  dependent  on  any  application 
or  request  by  any  Trade  Union  or  any 
workman,  or  upon  any  record  or 
agreement  by  this  or  that  employer, 
that  the  pre-war  conditions  and  prac- 
tices, whatever  they  were,  should  be 
restored  at  the  end  of  the  war,  of 
which  the  Trade  Union  Congress  and 
the  Labour  Party  Conference  reiterate 
that  they  expect  the  fulfilment. 

THE  TRANSFORMATION  OF  INDUSTRY. 

Under  the  continued  incitement  and 
pressure  of  the  Ministry  of  Munitions, 
the  employers  in  all  the  industries 
supplying  the  thousand  and  one  dif- 
ferent things  that  the  Government 
required  gradually  transformed  their 
26 


THE  NATION'S  PLEDGE 

factories  and  workshops,  not  only  as 
regards  buildings  and  machinery,  but 
also  as  regards  the  hours  of  labour, 
mealtimes,  overtime,  and  holidays ; 
the  methods  and  rates  of  remunera- 
tion ;  the  conditions  of  engagement, 
suspension,  and  dismissal;  the  dis- 
ciplinary code,  with  its  fines  and 
other  penalties;  the  relation  of  the 
operatives  to  the  machines  and  of 
the  various  grades  and  classes  of 
operatives  to  each  other;  and,  above 
all,  as  regards  the  grades,  classes,  ages, 
trades,  and  sex  of  the  operatives 
employed.  It  is  suggested  that  no 
such  sweeping  transformation  in  the 
organization  of  British  industry  —  a 
transformation  occurring  not  in  any 
one  trade  only  but  simultaneously  in 
nearly  all  branches  of  manufacture — 
has  taken  place  since  what  is  known 
as  the  Industrial  Revolution  of  1780- 
1825.  The  present  revolution,  com- 
pressed within  little  ever  a  couple  of 
years,  has  been  rendered  possible  only 
27 


BBSTOBATION  OF  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

by  the  abrogation  of  the  network  of 
usages  and  regulations,  customs  and 
rules  which  the  Trade  Unions  so  patrioti- 
cally allowed  "for  the  duration  of 
the  war." 

So  smoothly  has  the  revolution  been 
made  in  the  great  majority  of  cases — 
so  completely  have  employers  been 
set  free  to  alter  the  working  condi- 
tions— that  they  are  often  unaware  of 
the  extent  to  which  their  alterations 
infringed  the  old  network  of  rules  and 
customs.  The  actual  changes  made 
have  naturally  varied  from  trade  to 
trade,  from  district  to  district,  within 
any  one  trade,  and  even  from  establish- 
ment to  establishment.  They  have  not 
been  restricted  to  the  "  Controlled 
Establishments,"  now  nearing  5,000  in 
number;  nor  to  those  other  thousands 
to  whom  some  of  the  provisions  of 
the  Munitions  Acts  limiting  the  free- 
dom of  labour  have  been  applied  by 
official  order ;  nor  yet  to  the  innumer- 
able other  firms  employed  on  "war 
28 


THE   NATION  S  PLEDGE 

work."  Nor  has  their  operation  been 
confined  to  the  orders  of  the  British 
Government  or  its  Allies.  There  is 
scarcely  a  branch  of  manufacturing 
industry  that  has  not  been  affected, 
from  steel-smelting  to  the  making  of 
scientific  instruments,  from  saw-milling 
and  shipbuilding  to  every  corner  of 
the  furnishing  trade;  from  processes 
in  all  the  metals  arid  chemicals  to 
work  in  leather,  glass,  pottery,  india- 
rubber,  textiles,  paper,  and  food  pre- 
parations, not  even  wholly  excluding 
the  transport,  distributive,  and  muni- 
cipal services.  It  is,  of  course,  not 
the  case  that  every  factory  has  been 
transformed  in  all  respects.  The 
extent  of  the  transformation  in  each 
case  has  depended  on  the  nature  of 
the  industry,  the  efficiency  and  energy 
of  particular  employers,  the  amount  of 
pressure  applied  by  the  Ministry  of 
Munitions,  and  evren  the  degrees  to 
which  those  concerned  in  particular 
establishments  have  known  how  to 
29 


RESTORATION  OP  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

capture  the  heart  and  enlist  the 
co-operation  of  those  whom  they  em- 
ployed. 


THE  TRADE  UNIONISM  THAT 
CONTINUES. 

Nor  does  the  abrogation  of  those 
Trade  Union  rules  and  agreements, 
customs,  and  usages  which  have  been 
found  to  restrict  output  or  diminish 
production  mean,  as  some  people 
seem  to  imagine,  the  total  suspension 
of  Trade  Unionism.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  Trade  Unions  have  in  nearly 
all  cases  greatly  increased  their  mem- 
bership during  the  war  (allowance 
being  made  for  members  with  the 
colours) ;  and  a  large  part — in  many 
Trade  Unions  the  major  part  —  of 
their  activities  has  remained  unaffected. 
Twenty  years  ago,  in  analysing  in 
detail  the  whole  field  of  Trade  Union 
action,1  we  described  these  activities 

1  Industrial  Democracy  >  by  S.  and  B.  Webb. 
30 


THE  NATION'S  PLEDGE 

(apart  from  the  Friendly  Society  side) 
as  falling  into  two  classes,  namely, 
those  inspired  by  the  Doctrine  of 
Vested  Interests  and  those  inspired 
by  the  Doctrine  of  the  Common  Rule. 
\Ve  pointed  out  that  the  activities  of 
the  former  class,  inherited  from  the 
past  (whilst  entirely  justified  as  weapons 
of  defence),  had  invidious  results,  were 
becoming  less  effective  even  as  weapons 
of  defence,  and  characterized  only  a 
portion,  and,  as  we  thought,  the  least 
successful  portion,  of  the  Trade  Union 
world.  The  activities  of  the  other 
class,  leading  to  a  reliance  on  the 
maintenance  of  the  Standard  Rate 
and  the  Normal  Day,  without  restric- 
tion of  numbers  or  limitation  of  output, 
and  without  any  invidious  exclusive- 
ness,  were  coming  more  and  more  to 
be  the  characteristic  features  of  British 
Trade  Unionism,  and  were,  in  our 
judgment,  not  merely  harmless  to 
British  industry  but  actually  produc- 
tive of  great  economic  and  social 
81 


RESTORATION  OF  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

advantages  to  the  nation  as  a  whole 
as  well  as  to  the  workmen.  Now,  it 
is  significant  that  it  is  only  the  Trade 
Union  activities  of  the  former  class, 
based  on  the  Doctrine  of  Vested 
Interests,  which  have  been  found 
obstructive  or  in  the  way  of  increased 
production,  and  which  have  therefore 
been  suspended.  The  very  extensive 
range  and  volume  of  Trade  Union 
activities  of  the  latter  class,  based  on 
the  Doctrine  of  the  Common  Rule, 
which  some  of  the  strongest  Trade 
Unions  (for  example,  the  Cotton 
Spinners)  have  found  so  efficacious, 
have  not  been  interfered  with ;  and 
these  remain  in  full  force.  This  may 
explain  the  fact  that,  notwithstanding 
the  suspension  of  all  the  Trade  Union 
rules  and  agreements,  customs,  and 
usages  that  the  employers  have  cared 
to  suspend,  the  strength  and  activity 
of  Trade  Unionism  have  steadily  in- 
creased, so  that,  whether  in  member- 
ship or  in  funds,  the  forces  of  Trade 
32 


THE  NATION'S  PLEDGE 

Unionism  are  actually  more  extensive 
than  they  have  been  at  any  previous 
time.  The  strength  of  the  Trade 
Union  position  does  not  lessen  the 
difficulty  of  the  situation. 


THE  INDUSTRIAL  CHANGES. 

We  shall  realize  better  what  is  the 
character  of  the  "  Trade  Union  con- 
ditions "  that  have  been  suspended  if 
we  state  the  changes  in  the  organiza- 
tion and  management  of  the  factory 
that  their  abrogation  has  permitted. 
During  these  fateful  two  years  the 
employers  in  practically  all  industries 
have,  to  a  greater  or  less  degree — 

(i.)  Changed  the  processes  of  manu- 
facture, notably  so  as  to  enable  work 
formerly  done  by  skilled  craftsmen  to  be 
done  by  women  or  labourers ; 

(ii.)  Introduced  new  and  additional 
machinery  with  the  same  object; 

(iii.)  Engaged  in  work  or  on  processes 
33  o 


RESTOKATION  OF  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

formerly  done  by  skilled  craftsmen,  boys, 
women,  and  unapprenticed  men  ; 

(iv.)  Increased  the  proportion  of  boys 
to  men ; 

(v.)  Substituted  piecework  and  bonus 
systems  for  time  wages ;  and  that  with* 
out  any  printed  and  collectively-agreed-to 
piecework  list  of  prices,  or  other  pro- 
tection against  a  future  cutting  of  rates ; 

(vi.)  Increased  the  hours  of  labour, 
sometimes  refusing  also  any  satisfactory 
addition  for  overtime,  night  duty,  and 
Sunday  work ; 

(vii.)  Speeded  up  production,  getting  rid 
of  all  customary  understandings  among 
the  workers  of  what  constituted  a  fair 
day's  work,  or  what  times  should  be 
taken  for  particular  jobs ; 

(viii.)  Suppressed  demarcation  dis- 
putes and  ignored  all  claims,  whether  to 
kinds  of  work  or  particular  jobs,  of  par- 
ticular unions,  particular  grades,  particu- 
lar sets  of  craftsmen,  or  a  particular  sex. 

It  is  these  changes,  avowedly  made 

only  for  the  duration  of  the  war,  which 

the  nation  has  been  most  solemnly  and 

unconditionally   pledged — by  a  whole 

34 


THE  NATION'S  PLEDGE 

series  of  Cabinet  Ministers,  by  two 
successive  Premiers,  by  a  unanimous 
House  of  Commons,  and  by  the  entire 
newspaper  Press — to  undo  and  reverse 
on  the  conclusion  of  the  war.  Nor 
has  the  pledge  been  given  only  by 
the  statesmen  and  politicians.  Every 
manufacturing  employer  who  has, 
since  March  1915,  received  a  Govern- 
ment contract  has  individually  pledged 
himself  in  writing  in  similar  terms  ; 
whilst  every  firm,  whether  or  not  a 
controlled  establishment  or  engaged  in 
Government  work,  which  has  had  any 
section  of  the  Munitions  Acts  applied 
to  it  has  come  under  a  like  obligation. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  or  quibble 
about  it.  We  have  pledged  our  faith, 
individually  and  collectively,  to  "rein- 
state the  working  conditions  ...  on 
the  pre-war  basis" — to  see  that  all  the 
departures — 

"from  the  practice  ruling  in  our  work- 
shops,  shipyards,   and    other    industries 
35 


RESTORATION  OF  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

prior  to  the  war  shall  only  be  for  the 
period  of  the  war " — to  ensure  "  that 
things  would  be  restored  exactly  to  the 
position  they  were  in  before  the  sus- 
pension of  all  these  restrictions  and 
practices  that  interfere  with  the  increase 
of  the  output." 


WHAT  THE  NATION  HAS  GAINED. 

It  is  idle  at  this  stage  to  consider 
whether  the  Government  and  the 
House  of  Commons,  together  with  the 
various  employers'  associations,  were 
wise  in  pledging  themselves  in  such 
unequivocal  terms  to  an  exact  and 
specific  restoration  of  the  "pre-war 
conditions  "  and  "  the  practice  ruling 
in  our  workshops,"  or  in  requiring 
employers  individually  to  bind  them- 
selves by  a  similar  obligation.  The 
employers,  like  the  Government  and 
the  nation  as  a  whole,  have  signed  and 
sealed  this  "  scrap  of  paper."  And  we 
cannot  deny  the  advantages  that 
we  have  drawn  from  the  temporary 
36 


THE  NATION'S  PLEDGE 

abrogation  of  the  network  of  rules  and 
agreements,  usages  and  customs  that 
it  procured.  It  is  not  merely  that  the 
Ministry  of  Munitions  has  got  delivered 
during  these  two  years,  as  it  tells  us, 
an  incredible  quantity,  far  in  excess  of 
any  previous  record,  of  shells  and  guns 
and  every  kind  of  supplies  needed  for 
the  Armies  and  Navies  of  ourselves 
and  our  Allies — the  workpeople  toiling 
so  incessantly  during  "all  the  hours 
God  made  "  that  the  Government  itself 
has  been  driven,  on  the  remonstrances 
of  Sir  George  Newman's  Committee, 
to  impose  new  limitations  in  order  to 
prevent  too  large  a  proportion  of  them 
from  breaking  down  in  health. 

What  is  perhaps  of  more  permanent 
importance  from  the  employers'  stand- 
point is  that  they  have  discovered  how 
to  increase  the  output  of  their  establish- 
ments without  increasing  the  number 
of  skilled  operatives ;  and,  at  the  same 
time,  how  to  diminish  the  "  labour- 
cost  "  of  their  products,  irrespective  of 
37 


BESTORATION  OF  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

any  reduction  of  the  rates  of  wages. 
A  large  section  of  British  industry  has 
at  last  learned  by  experience,  as  it  had 
long  admitted  in  theory,  the  lesson  of 
the  economic  advantage  of  a  large 
output,  of  production  for  a  continuous 
demand,  of  standardization  and  long 
runs,  of  the  use  of  automatic  machinery 
for  the  separate  production  of  each 
component  part,  of  team-work  and 
specialization  among  the  operatives,  of 
universalizing  piece-work  speed  and  of 
not  grudging  to  the  workers  the  larger 
earnings  brought  by  piece-work  effort. 
We  do  not  think  it  is  any  exaggera- 
tion to  say  that  the  15,000  or  20,000 
establishments,  large  or  small,  in  every 
conceivable  industry,  with  which  the 
Ministry  of  Munitions,  the  Board  of 
Trade,  the  War  Trade  Department, 
and  the  Admiralty  have  been  in  touch, 
are  now  turning  out,  on  an  average, 
more  than  twice  the  product  per 
operative  employed  than  they  did 
before  the  war ;  whilst,  assuming  the 
38 


THE  NATION'S  PLEDGE 

same  standard  rates  of  wages,  grade  by 
grade,  the  labour-cost  works  out  con- 
siderably lower  than  under  the  old 
system. 

Employers,  at  any  rate,  are  abun- 
dantly convinced  of  the  economic 
advantages  of  the  new  industrial 
revolution  that  has  been  effected.  Not 
from  engineering  alone,  but  from 
industry  after  industry  comes  the 
report  that  productivity  and  profits 
have  alike  so  much  increased  that  any 
reversion  to  the  old  state  of  things 
would  be  disastrous ;  and  that  the 
continuance  of  the  new  organization 
and  practice  of  their  factories  is  in- 
dispensable if  this  country  is  to  be 
able  to  face  the  impending  fierce 
competition  for  the  world's  trade. 
Moreover,  the  practical  difficulties  of 
reinstating  in  each  factory  the  working 
conditions  on  the  pre-war  basis  are 
very  great.  There  is  no  complete 
statement  of  what  were  the  usages  and 
customs,  or  of  what  was  the  ruling 
39 


RESTORATION   OF   TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

practice,  of  each  establishment.  The 
records  of  changes  which  the  employers 
were  ordered  to  keep  have,  in  many 
cases,  not  been  kept  at  all ;  and  prob- 
ably in  no  case  have  they  been  kept 
with  completeness. 


A  BARGAIN  NOT  KEPT. 

For  this  failure  to  carry  out  the 
bargain  which  it  made  with  the  Trade 
Unions,  and  to  obtain  the  evidence 
which  would  at  any  rate  have  facilitated 
the  eventual  fulfilment  of  the  Govern- 
ment pledge,  the  Ministry  of  Munitions 
(which  was,  of  course,  busy  about  other 
things)  is  itself  responsible.  For  many 
months  no  steps  were  taken  to  require 
employers  to  forward  the  records 
provided  for  by  the  statute;  it  is 
believed  that  no  employer  out  of  the 
whole  5,000  or  10,000  has  been 
prosecuted  for  failure  to  comply  with 
this  provision;  and  to  this  day  no 
systematic  arrangements  have  been 
40 


THE   NATION'S   PLEDGE 

made  with  the  Trade  Unions  concerned 
to  get  the  records  agreed  to,  contem- 
poraneously with  the  changes,  by  both 
parties.  The  Government  is  therefore 
estopped  from  now  taking  refuge  in 
the  imperfection  of  the  records.  And 
the  changes  (which  could,  of  course, 
be  proved  by  other  evidence,  including, 
in  many  cases,  the  signed  agreements 
of  the  employers  and  the  Employers' 
Association  as  to  the  pre-war  practice) 
have  often  been  enormous  and  far- 
reaching. 

During  the  past  two  years  the 
factories  have,  in  many  cases,  been 
enlarged  or  completely  rearranged  ;  the 
application  of  power  has  been  revolu- 
tionized ;  the  provision  for  lighting, 
heating,  and  ventilation  has  been  trans- 
formed. The  course  of  manufacture 
and  the  appliances  have  been  changed. 
Many  tens  of  thousands  of  automatic 
lathes  and  other  machines  have  been 
installed,  frequently  of  kinds  never 
before  employed  in  the  establishments 
41 


RESTORATION  OF  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

in  which  they  are  now  working,  and  in 
some  cases  not  previously  in  use  in 
this  country.  The  addition  made  to 
the  machinery — almost  all  of  it  in  the 
establishments  doing  "  war  work  " — 
is  estimated  to  run,  in  the  aggregate, 
into  hundreds  of  millions  sterling.  A 
large  proportion  of  this  machinery  has 
been  put  up  for  the  new  processes 
which  have  been  introduced  in  con- 
nection with  the  standardization  of  parts 
and  the  long  runs  of  repetition  work ; 
and  for  all  this  the  old  time-work  rates 
of  wages  have  been  superseded  by  new 
piecework  and  bonus  systems.  With 
the  rapidly  progressing  "dilution  of 
labour  "  and  the  substitution  of  team- 
work for  individual  production,  the  old 
rates  of  speed  and  the  old  standards  of 
output  have  become  wholly  obsolete. 

Finally,  in  order  to  work  the  new 
machinery  and  to  execute  the  newly 
devised  processes,  as  well  as  to  replace 
the  skilled  mechanics  called  to  the 
colours,  new  classes  of  operatives, 
42 


THE  NATION'S  PLEDGE 

who  would  never  have  been  allowed 
inside  the  establishments  prior  to  the 
war,  have  been  taken  on  and  trained 
to  the  new  jobs  to  the  extent  of 
several  hundred  thousand,  a  very  large 
proportion  of  whom  are  quite  cer- 
tainly determined  to  continue  in  the 
new  vocations  that  they  have  gained 
— craftsmen  belonging  to  other  trades, 
unapprenticed  handimen,  semi-skilled 
men,  nondescript  persons  from  all 
sorts  of  occupations,  hobbledehoy 
youths,  and,  last  of  all,  women,  some 
of  whom  have  now  made  themselves 
capable  of  the  work  of  the  all-round 
skilled  craftsman. 


AN  ANXIOUS  QUESTION. 

How  are  the  employers  going  to 
fulfil  the  terms  of  the  Government 
contracts  that  they  have  been  sign- 
ing since  March  1915,  which  all 
include,  as  we  have  seen,  an  ex- 
plicit undertaking  that  the  changes 
43 


RESTORATION  OF  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

in  their  establishments  are  to  be  only 
for  the  duration  of  the  war  ?  How 
is  Mr.  Lloyd  George  going  to  carry 
out  the  promise  that  he  made — in 
so  doing  only  repeating  the  under- 
taking of  the  Treasury  Agreement, 
and  the  pledges  in  which  Mr.  Bonar 
Law,  Mr.  Asquith,  and  other  Minis- 
ters joined — that  things  should  be 
restored  "  exactly  to  the  position  they 
were  in  before  the  suspension  of  all 
the  restrictions  and  practices  that 
interfere  with  the  increase  of  out- 
put "  ?  The  position  is  not  made 
easier  by  the  fact  that  many  firms, 
and  a  large  proportion  of  the  newly 
introduced  operatives,  have  no  desire 
for  any  such  restoration.  Some 
employers,  doubtless  forgetting  the 
obligations  by  which  they  have  indi- 
vidually bound  themselves  in  their 
Government  contracts,  make  no  secret 
of  their  intention  to  allow  in  their 
establishment  no  such  reversion  to 
methods  of  working,  processes  of 


THE  NATION'S  PLEDGE 

manufacture,  and  systems  of  remuner- 
ation which  they  denounce  as  obsolete 
and  uneconomic.  Nothing  will  in- 
duce them,  so  some  have  declared,  to 
restore  the  network  of  rules  and 
agreements,  usages  and  customs  under 
which  their  factories  were  working 
prior  to  the  war. 

It  is  scarcely  to  be  wondered  that 
an  uneasy  feeling  is  spreading  among 
the  Trade  Unions  as  to  whether  the 
pledge,  so  solemnly  and  so  repeatedly 
made  to  them,  is,  after  all,  going  to 
be  fulfilled. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE    DANGER    OF    A    SHAM 
RESTORATION 

AS  we  have  shown,  we  are  face 
to  face  with  the  unpleasant  fact 
that  the  nation  has  given  a 
solemn  pledge  to  labour  which  it 
cannot  possibly  fulfil.  Without  Mr. 
Wells's  "  Time  Machine "  we  cannot 
return  to  an  era  that  is  past.  The 
pre-war  conditions  cannot  be  restored. 
Things  cannot  be  put  back  in  the 
position  they  were  in  prior  to  the  new 
industrial  revolution.  The  network  of 
agreements  and  rules,  customs  and 
usages,  which  made  up  the  practice 
of  the  workshop,  had  reference  to 
factors  which  have,  to  a  large  extent, 
been  changed  or  replaced.  The  old 
network,  in  so  far  as  it  has  been  sus- 
pended, would,  if  it  could  be  restored, 
46 


THE  DANGER  OF  A  SHAM  RESTORATION 

fit  neither  the  new  machines  nor  the 
new  organization  of  the  establishment, 
neither  the  new  processes  nor  the  new 
classes  of  operatives,  neither  the  new 
intensity  of  production  nor  the 
new  methods  of  remuneration. 

To  take  only  one  instance,  the  resto- 
ration of  "the  practice  ruling  in  our 
workshops,  shipyards,  and  other  in- 
dustries "  would  involve,  in  the  case 
of  the  Amalgamated  Society  of  En- 
gineers alone,  and  confining  ourselves 
for  the  moment  to  the  evidence  of 
the  printed  rules,  agreements,  awards, 
and  declarations  of  employers  and 
employers'  associations  which  are  in 
the  possession  of  the  Trade  Union, 
(1)  the  exclusion  of  all  the  women, 
unapprenticed  men,  men  from  other 
crafts,  labourers,  and  in  many  factories 
also  the  non-unionists,  from  all  strictly 
engineering  work ;  (2)  the  total  abo- 
lition of  "  dilution "  and  team-work 
in  all  its  forms;  (3)  either  the  scrap- 
ping of  the  many  millions  of  pounds' 
47 


RESTORATION  OF  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

worth  of  new  automatic  machines, 
or  their  manning,  even  when  they 
were  used  for  simple  operations,  ex- 
clusively by  skilled  engineers  at  the 
old  standard  rates ;  (4)  the  aban- 
donment of  any  form  of  "scientific 
management"  wherever  it  has  been' 
introduced ;  (5)  in  nearly  all  estab- 
lishments the  abolition  of  piecework 
or  bonus  systems  of  remuneration, 
where  they  have  been  newly  adopted, 
and  a  resumption  of  the  old  weekly 
standard  rates ;  and,  in  short,  (6)  a 
return  to  the  arrangement  under 
which  a  skilled  mechanic,  attending 
to  a  single  machine,  occupied  exclu- 
sively with  a  single  job,  did  it  from 
start  to  finish  at  a  fixed  weekly  wage. 
Moreover,  it  must  be  remembered 
that  it  was,  in  addition,  particularly 
the  unwritten  usage  of  a  customary 
limitation  of  individual  output  that 
the  employers  and  the  Government 
were  anxious  to  get  abrogated ;  and 
this,  too,  would  have  to  be  reinstated 
48 


THE  DANGER  OF  A  SHAM  RESTORATION 

and  permitted,  as  part  of  the  prac- 
tice of  the  workshop,  practically  wher- 
ever the  workmen  chose.  Other  Trade 
Unions  are  in  a  position  to  prove 
their  "pre-war  conditions"  on  similar 
lines. 


FACE  TO  FACE  WITH  FAILURE. 

To  put  it  plainly,  we  could  not 
restore  that  part  which  has  been 
abrogated  of  the  network  of  agree- 
ments and  rules,  usages  and  cus- 
toms, that  existed  before  the  war, 
even  if  this  could  anyhow  be  done, 
without  undoing  the  new  industrial 
revolution ;  and  without  making,  in 
a  reverse  direction,  as  sweeping  a 
change  throughout  British  manufac- 
turing industry  as  has  been  effected 
by  that  revolution.  We  may  as  well 
admit  to  ourselves,  straight  away, 
that,  in  face  of  so  great  a  national 
loss,  and  of  the  opposition  both  of 
the  employers  and  of  the  new  classes 
49  D 


RESTORATION  OF  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

of  operatives  who  would  have  to  be 
turned  out,  together  with  that  of 
their  sympathizers  in  other  social 
circles,  no  Government  could  insist 
on  carrying  out  the  pledge;  and  that, 
in  spite  of  its  plighted  troth,  no 
Government  will  try. 

The  position  is  therefore  grave.  The 
eagerness  of  the  Minister  of  Munitions 
has  committed  us  to  a  national  promise, 
which  procured  for  us,  collectively  as 
a  nation  and  individually  as  employers, 
very  great  advantages ;  and  now  we 
find  that  we  cannot  keep  our  word. 

Up  and  down  the  country  the  work- 
men will  be  very  angry  ;  and,  as  we 
must  own,  with  some  cause.  In  every 
branch  meeting,  at  every  workshop 
bench,  at  every  Labour  Conference, 
the  tale  will  be  discussed  of  how, 
when  the  Government  was  in  a  hole, 
and  the  employers  were  eager  for  war 
profits,  the  opportunity  was  taken  to 
play  upon  the  workmen's  patriotic 
feelings  to  induce  them  to  make  what 
50 


THE   DANGER  OF   A  SHAM  RESTORATION 

the  responsible  Minister  described  as 
perhaps  as  great  a  sacrifice  as  has  ever 
been  asked  of  any  community  ;  of  how 
the  Trade  Union  leaders,  in  the  name 
of  the  workmen,  and  often  against 
local  opposition,  made  this  sacrifice  of 
"  the  whole  armour  "  of  Trade  Union- 
ism, in  reliance  on  the  pledge  of  the 
Government  and  the  employers  that 
the  "  pre-war  conditions  "  of  the  work- 
shop would  be  in  their  integrity  re- 
stored ;  and  of  how,  when  the  time 
came,  the  nation  and  the  employers, 
having  secured  all  the  advantages, 
broke  their  word,  and  the  workmen 
found  themselves  done !  For  a  whole 
generation  the  Great  Betrayal  will  be 
talked  about  and  bitterly  resented.  It 
will  not  be  a  good  basis  on  which  to 
build  the  national  co-operation  and 
industrial  efficiency  that  we  desire. 

DANGER  OF  SHAM  RESTORATION. 

What,   then,   can   be  done?     There 
is   one  line   of   policy   which   may  be 

51  ' 


RESTORATION  OF  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

confidently  predicted  to  lead  to  muddle 
and  disaster,  discredit,  and  class-bitter- 
ness, and  which  nevertheless  is  dan- 
gerously likely — because  it  seems  to 
get  over  the  difficulty  for  the  moment 
— to  be  the  one  to  which  the  Govern- 
ment will  be  tempted.  That  is  the 
policy  of  a  sham  restoration.  The 
workman,  who  is  still  too  often  re- 
garded as  "  half-devil  and  half-child," 
may  be  deceived.  The  Trade  Union- 
ists, as  the  Board  of  Trade  and  the 
Ministry  of  Munitions  have  come  to 
believe,  can  be  cajoled  into  anything ! 
We  must,  it  will  be  said,  have  a  con- 
ference or,  if  need  be,  a  series  of  con- 
ferences, and  get  adopted  some  sort  of 
compromise.  Find  out  privately  from 
the  big  engineering  employers  the 
utmost  that  they  can  without  detri- 
ment concede  ;  discover  discreetly  from 
the  members  of  the  executives  of  the 
principal  Trade  Unions  concerned  on 
which  turns  of  phrase  their  members 
lay  most  stress  ;  and  it  will  not  pass 
52 


THE   DANGER  OF   A  SHAM  RESTORATION 

the  wit  of  the  Civil  Service  to  compose 
a  form  of  words  which  will  seem  to 
satisfy  the  workmen,  and  yet  will,  in 
effect,  not  upset  the  new  organization 
of  the  factory  ;  which  will  assert  the 
monopoly  of  the  skilled  craftsmen  to 
certain  kinds  of  work,  yet  will,  in  fact, 
so  define  them  as  to  allow  the  auto- 
matic lathes  to  be  worked  with  diluted 
labour,  or  by  the  labourers  who  have 
become  so  proficient;  which  will 
avowedly  maintain  engineering  as  a 
man's  trade,  and  yet  not  dismiss  more 
than  a  small  proportion  of  the  women 
from  the  engineering  workshops ;  which 
will  in  bold  words  uphold  the  principle 
of  the  standard  rate,  and  yet  not  upset, 
or  even  bring  under  collective  bargain- 
ing, the  newly  introduced  piecework 
scales  and  premium  bonus  systems,  in 
which  it  is  always  open  to  the  em- 
ployers arbitrarily  and  insidiously  to 
cut  the  rates  and  reduce  the  times. 


53 


RESTORATION   OF   TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

FACILE  NEGOTIATIONS. 

Moreover,  it  will  be  only  a  paper 
agreement,  without  authoritative  in- 
terpretation or  effective  sanction.  The 
employers  will  know,  without  even  an 
official  hint,  that  the  terms  drafted  will 
not  be  enforced  or  even  be  enforceable 
by  the  Government  at  all ;  and  will 
therefore  not  need  to  be  as  strictly 
obeyed  as  the  Factory  Acts  ;  whilst 
the  necessarily  general  terms  of  such 
a  universal  treaty  will  be  interpreted 
by  the  myriads  of  employers  them- 
selves each  in  his  own  way.  When 
the  secret  negotiators  and  the  expert 
draughtsmen  have  formulated  their 
scheme  there  will  be  a  private  con- 
ference, of  the  kind  of  which  there 
have  been  so  many  within  the  last 
two  years,  made  up  of  representatives 
of  "  the  Trade  Unions  concerned," 
selected  for  the  Government  by  the 
hand  of  one  of  its  many  "Labour" 
Advisory  Committees.  This  select 
54 


THE  DANGER  OF  A  SHAM  RESTORATION 

conference,  without  reporters,  will  be 
very  persuasively  addressed  by  Minis- 
ters— perhaps  by  the  Prime  Minister — 
and  the  difficulties  will  be  discussed 
with  a  great  show  of  frankness.  The 
matter  will  be  treated,  it  may  be 
predicted,  not  so  much  as  the  fulfil- 
ment of  an  unconditional  national 
pledge  to  the  Trade  Union  movement 
as  a  whole,  as  an  intervention  of  the 
Government  to  compose  the  differences 
as  to  the  restoration  found  to  exist 
among  the  Trade  Unions  themselves ; 
and  much  will  be  made  of  the  in- 
compatibility between  the  desires  in 
the  matter  of  the  skilled  craftsmen 
and  the  labourers,  and  between  those 
of  rival  crafts. 

At  the  right  moment  the  carefully 
drafted  compromise  will  be  produced, 
and  persuasively  explained.  Of  course, 
no  opportunity  will  be  given  for  its 
scrutiny  at  home,  for  it  to  be  sub- 
mitted to  a  legal  adviser,  or  even  for 
private  discussion.  The  workmen  will 
55 


RESTORATION  OF  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

not  even  be  allowed  to  bring  their 
solicitor  or  other  skilled  advisers  with 
them.  The  conference  will  be  asked 
to  come  to  a  vote.  Some  verbal 
amendments  may  be  made.  When 
the  vote  is  taken  it  may  very  probably 
be  found  that  more  than  half  of  these 
specially  invited  representatives — partly 
out  of  inability  to  think,  then  and 
there,  of  any  practicable  alternative, 
partly  under  the  influence  of  the 
speeches,  and  partly  because  of  honest 
desire  to  serve  the  Government — will 
have  voted  for  the  very  specious 
compromise. 

DOWN  THE  SLOPE. 

The  rest  will  be  fatally  easy.  Any 
dissentient  Trade  Union  executive  need 
only  be  told  that  the  movement  as  a 
whole  has  accepted  the  terms,  and  that 
no  exceptions  can  be  made — and  then, 
as  a  special  favour,  a  separate  agree- 
ment will  be  privately  made  with  that 
56 


THE  DANGER  OP   A   SHAM   RESTORATION 

union,  conceding  some  slight  altera- 
tions to  meet  the  particular  circum- 
stances of  its  industry.  The  various 
compromises  will  then  be  submitted 
to  the  memberships  of  the  several 
organizations  as  the  best  terms  that 
their  National  Executive  could  obtain  ; 
and  there  will  be  much  angry  dis- 
cussion. Some  districts  will  oppose 
acceptance,  but  others  will  acquiesce, 
with  more  or  less  protest,  in  the 
terms,  to  which,  in  the  absence  of  any 
stated  alternative,  their  minds  will  by 
that  time  have  become  accustomed. 
There  may  be  strikes  here  and  there, 
but  they  will  probably  sputter  out. 
The  workmen,  as  they  will  presently 
discover,  will  have  been  done.  Not 
the  old  network  of  rules  and  regula- 
tions, customs  and  usages,  will  have 
been  restored ;  but  a  new  general 
agreement  will  have  been  substituted 
for  it  under  which  the  new  organiza- 
tion of  industry  will,  with  a  certain 
amount  of  local  friction,  continue  to 
57 


RESTORATION  OF  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

work.  The  nation  will  be  satisfied  that 
it  has,  more  or  less,  kept  its  word. 
The  corner  will  have  been  turned. 
Each  trade  will  then  be  left  to  make, 
by  its  own  subsequent  negotiations, 
and  at  the  cost  of  its  own  fighting, 
the  modifications  in  particular  points 
which  employers  and  workmen  will 
promptly  desire  and  fight  over. 

THREE  BAD  RESULTS. 

Now,  this  policy  of  a  sham  resto- 
ration, however  discreditable  to  our 
national  honour,  is  so  plausible  to  the 
bureaucratic  mind  that  it  is  desirable 
to  explain  very  definitely  why  it  will 
be  as  disastrous  for  the  nation  as  for 
the  workmen ;  and,  in  the  long  run, 
even  for  the  employers. 

It  will,  in  the  first  place,  not  bring 
industrial  peace.  The  terms  arranged 
will  not  provide,  and  will  not  have 
been  intended  to  provide,  any  real 
protection  or  genuine  safeguard,  in 
58 


THE   DANGER  OF   A  SHAM   RESTORATION 

substitution  for  "  the  whole  armour  of 
Trade  Union  regulations"  that  will  have 
been  got  rid  of,  for  the  standard  of 
life  of  the  skilled  craftsmen.  This 
standard  of  life  will,  the  whole  armour 
of  Trade  Unionism  having  been  thrown 
away,  inevitably  be  undermined  by 
the  admission  of  labourers  and  women 
at  lower  rates,  by  the  competition 
between  processes,  and  by  the  per- 
petual "  cutting  "  of  piecework  prices  or 
premium  bonus  times,  unsafeguarded 
either  by  standard  lists  or  collective 
bargaining,  that  the  sham  restoration 
will  have  been  deliberately  designed 
to  leave  open.  The  result  will  be,  not 
peace,  but  a  perpetual  succession  of 
strikes,  great  and  small,  in  all  the 
industries  affected;  strikes  that  will 
be  for  a  whole  generation  embittered 
by  their  relation  to  the  great  betrayal 
which  will  be  perpetually  recalled. 

In  the  second  place,  no  such  sham 
restoration  will  secure  to  the  relatively 
badly  organized  labourers,  and  still  less 
59 


RESTORATION  OF  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

to  the  women — these  two  classes  now 
comprising  literally  more  than  half  the 
staff  in  our  manufacturing  industries 
taken  as  a  whole — any  definite  mini- 
mum standard,  not  even  the  "  pound 
a  week "  which  Mr.  Lloyd  George, 
Mr.  Montagu,  and  Dr.  Addison,  as 
Ministers  of  Munitions,  have  tried  and 
failed  to  make  anything  like  universal. 
This  failure  to  secure  a  living  wage 
to  the  weaker  half  of  all  our  manu- 
facturing operatives  will  make  neither 
for  continued  efficiency  nor  for  in- 
dustrial contentment.  Although  the 
labourers  and  the  women  are  still 
badly  organized,  they  are  not  incapable 
of  resistance.  Already  in  1913-14 
there  were  more  stoppages  of  work 
due  to  strikes  of  women  or  labourers 
than  to  strikes  of  the  skilled  craftsmen. 
And  the  number  will  grow. 

Finally,  and  to  the  employer  eager 

for  industrial  progress  most  important 

of  all,  sham  restoration  will  do  nothing 

to    prevent — on    the    contrary,    it    is 

60 


THE   DANGER  OF  A   SHAM  RESTORATION 

bound  greatly  to  stimulate — those 
spontaneous  reprisals  of  the  workshop 
against  the  cutting  of  rates,  or  any 
abuse  of  piecework,  which  are  summed 
up  in  the  phrase  "  Ca'  canny."  It  was 
more  than  anything  else  this  secret 
and  nevertheless  widespread  refusal, 
not  in  the  engineering  workshops  only, 
but  also  in  innumerable  other  trades, 
to  do  more  than  was  considered  "a 
fair  day's  work,"  that  the  employers 
sought  once  for  all  to  get  rid  of  by 
what  they  called  the  abrogation  of 
Trade  Union  conditions.  The  sham 
restoration  of  these  conditions,  and 
the  sullen  resentment  that  it  will 
inevitably  cause  throughout  the  whole 
world  of  labour,  is  the  very  way  to 
bring  back  and  increase  the  silent 
limitation  of  output  that  British  em- 
ployers fear  more  than  anything  else. 
That  demon  cannot  be  exorcized  by 
tricking  the  workmen's  representatives 
into  any  sham  restoration  of  Trade 
Union  conditions  on  the  old  lines  to 
61 


EBSTOBATION  OF  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

which  the  employers  could  be  per- 
suaded to  agree,  or  which  would  be 
compatible  with  the  new  industrial 
revolution.  If  the  Government  is 
short-sighted  enough  to  try  this  dis- 
honourable course  of  a  sham  restoration, 
to  which  it  may  be  departmentally 
advised,  it  may  achieve  a  momentary 
appearance  of  success,  but  it  will  not 
have  averted  the  very  grave  peril  that 
hangs  over  British  industry. 

It  has  been  said,  indeed,  that  if 
things  are  to  be  put  back  as  they  were 
before  the  war,  the  same  argument 
applies  to  wages  ;  and  that  the  Trade 
Unions  will  therefore  not  wish  to  press 
their  claims  at  such  a  cost.  This  is 
a  profound  mistake.  To  begin  with, 
it  cannot  honestly  be  contended  that 
the  pledges  given,  and  specifically 
enacted  in  the  Munitions  Acts,  either 
included  or  contemplated  any  revision 
of  the  rates  of  wages.  The  pledges 
have  to  be  fulfilled  whatever  the  rates 
of  wages.  Moreover,  "real  wages" 
62 


THE  DANGER  OF   A   SHAM   RESTORATION 

have  fallen,  not  risen.  Money  wages 
have  nowhere  risen  in  proportion  to 
the  rise  in  the  cost  of  living.  Thus, 
if  it  is  argued  that  putting  things 
back  as  they  were  before  the  war 
includes  a  reversion  to  pre-war  money 
wages,  it  must  also,  it  is  clear,  include 
a  reversion  to  pre-war  prices,  which  it 
is  impossible  to  secure. 


No  SEPARATE  NEGOTIATIONS. 

It  follows  that  matters  would  not 
be  bettered  if  the  Government  threw 
the  whole  responsibility  on  the  em- 
ployers in  the  engineering  and  other 
industries  principally  affected,  and 
told  them  to  negotiate  with  the  Trade 
Unions  concerned,  in  order,  severally, 
to  make  the  best  bargain  that  they 
could.  The  transformation  of  each 
industry  affects  not  one  but  several 
dozen  Trade  Unions.  The  nation's 
pledge  was  given  not  particularly  to 
the  Amalgamated  Society  of  Engineers, 
63 


RESTORATION  OF  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

but  to  the  entire  Trade  Union  world. 
Moreover,  it  was  not  given  merely 
generally,  but  also  to  each  Trade 
Union  and  even  to  each  workman,1 
separately  and  specifically  ;  and  there 
would  be  no  settlement  until  every 
one  of  the  Trade  Unions  had  been 
settled  with.  In  view  of  the  rivalries 
and  conflicting  interests  of  the  sixty 
or  seventy  Trade  Unions  represented 
in  the  engineering  industry  alone ;  in 
view  of  the  very  different  claims  and 
demands  of  the  skilled  craftsmen,  the 
semi-skilled  men,  the  labourers,  and 
the  women,  all  of  whom  would  have 
to  be  separately  represented ;  in  view, 
moreover,  of  the  conflicting  claims  of 
a  "  Right  to  the  Trade "  and  of  the 
outstanding  demarcation  disputes,  it 
may  be  safely  said  that  (whilst  the 
device  of  separate  negotiations  might 
be  used  to  divide  the  Trade  Union 

1  Every    workman     may    proceed    in    the 
Munitions  Tribunal  to   secure   restoration   of 
the  Trade  Union  conditions. 
64 


THE  DANGER  OF  A  SHAM  RESTORATION 

forces,  and  to  settle  with  some  Unions, 
while  refusing  to  others  any  fulfilment 
of  the  pledge  given  to  all  alike)  no 
amicable  general  settlement  can 
possibly  be  reached  along  the  line 
of  separate  negotiations.  And  the 
Government  is  responsible  before  the 
nation  for  arriving  at  an  amicable 
general  settlement,  without  the  cordial 
acceptance  of  which  by  the  rank  and 
file  of  the  workmen  throughout  the 
whole  of  each  industry  the  elimination 
of  "Ca'  canny"  cannot  be  secured. 


65 


CHAPTER   IV 
WANTED— A  NEW  SETTLEMENT 

THE  warning  conveyed  in  the 
previous  chapter  shows  that 
what  is  wanted  is  not  any 
restoration  of  those  "  Trade  Union  con- 
ditions" which  have  been  suspended 
to  the  position  in  which  they  existed 
before  the  war.  In  any  real  sense  such 
a  restoration  has  been  rendered  im- 
practicable by  the  new  industrial 
revolution ;  and  any  disingenuous 
pretence  will  lead  only  to  trouble. 

What  is  wanted  is  a  new  settlement 
of  industry  on  a  basis  that  will  secure 
to  the  wage-earners,  honestly  and  effec- 
tively, what  they  have  really  at  heart ; 
and  at  the  same  time  allow  to  the 
managers  of  industry  that  freedom 
of  initiative  and  power  of  direction 
66 


WANTED — A  NEW   SETTLEMENT 

which  is,  whether  under  individualism 
or  collectivism,  indispensable  to  indus- 
trial progress.  Have  we,  in  the  nation, 
the  statesmanship  for  such  a  new 
settlement  ? 

The  Minister  who  will  have  to 
grapple  with  the  task  will  be  beset 
with  difficulties.  He  will  have  to  deal, 
on  the  one  hand,  with  employers  who 
are  heartily  sick  of  the  trammels  and 
annoyances  to  which  they  have  been 
subjected  in  the  past  by  the  ill-con- 
ceived restrictions  forged  out  of  the 
suspicions  and  by  the  innate  industrial 
conservatism  of  the  workmen ;  and 
who  frankly  declare  their  intention  to 
manage  their  factories  henceforth  in 
whatever  way  they  think  best.  He 
will  have  to  meet,  among  the  work- 
men, not  only  the  reluctance  of  Trade 
Union  leaders  to  abandon  old  weapons, 
but  also  the  influence,  increased  by 
every  betrayal  and  by  every  act  of  au- 
tocracy of  the  employers,  of  those  who 
do  not  want  to  make  the  "  capitalist 
67 


RESTORATION  OF  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

system  "  work  smoothly,  because  they 
fondly  imagine  that  its  imminent 
"  breakdown  "  will  usher  in  a  Utopian 
State. 

Nor  will  such  a  new  settlement  be 
possible  if  it  is  true  that  between  the 
real  objects  of  the  employers  and  those 
of  the  wage-earners  there  necessarily 
yawns  an  impassable  gulf;  if  national 
efficiency  is  not  a  necessary  condition 
of  genuinely  securing  the  interests  of 
either  party,  and  compatible  with 
obtaining  the  utmost  results  for  both ; 
and  if  the  most  hopeful  evolution  of 
society,  whether  this  is  to  be  towards 
an  equalitarian  Socialism  or  towards 
any  other  goal,  does  not  lie  in  always 
making  the  best,  rather  than  the  worst, 
out  of  what  we  find  at  the  moment 
to  hand.  It  is  in  the  belief  that  these 
propositions  have  at  least  a  strong 
presumption  of  validity  that  the  fol- 
lowing analysis  of  the  conditions  of  a 
new  settlement  is  offered  for  con- 
sideration. 

68 


WANTED — A  NEW  SETTLEMENT 

EVILS  TO  BE  WARDED  OFF. 

We  shall  do  well  to  consider,  not 
so  much  the  precise  stipulations  that 
employers  and  workmen  have  sought 
to  enforce  in  the  past,  as  the  objects 
which  they  have  had  in  view.  Thus, 
the  customs  and  conditions  which  the 
workmen  have  given  up,  at  the  request 
of  the  Government,  for  the  duration 
of  the  war,  represent  a  large  part  of 
the  protection  which  the  workmen 
have  gradually  built  up  for  themselves 
against  manifest  evils.  What  are 
these  evils  ? 

/  There  is,  first,  the  danger  of  un- 
employment of  each  particular  set  of 
workmen,  either  immediately  or  at 
some  future  time.  This  fear  gives 
most  of  the  bitterness  to  the  trouble- 
some demarcation  disputes  among  the 
different  crafts  ;  maintains  the  spirit 
of  exclusiveness  which  seeks  to  keep 
out  unapprenticed  men,  labourers,  or 
women ;  lies  at  the  root  of  the  objection 
69 


RESTORATION  OP  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

to  boy  labour ;  and  strengthens  the 
objection  to  long  hours  of  labour, 
habitual  overtime,  increased  use  of 
machinery,  and  generally  the  "  speed- 
ing up"  of  production,  as  all  tending 
to  "  deprive  other  men  of  work."  If 
the  workman  were  somehow  relieved 
from  his  fear  of  there  presently  being 
"not  enough  jobs  to  go  round,"  and 
guaranteed  against  involuntary  un- 
employment, he  could  afford  to  forgo 
many  of  the  above  restrictions.  J 

Secondly,  there  is  the  danger  of  a 
reduction  of  the  standard  rate.  This 
— coupled  with  the  fear  of  unemploy- 
ment— is  at  the  root  of  the  objection 
to  the  introduction  of  new  machines 
which  enable  unskilled  or  semi-skilled 
labour  to  be  substituted  for  the  fully 
qualified  craftsmen ;  it  intensifies  the 
objection  to  the  introduction  of  women 
and  labourers;  it  inspires  the  resistance 
to  an  undue  multiplication  of  appren- 
tices or  the  improper  use  of  boy 
labour ;  it  leads  men  to  object  to 
70 


WANTED — A  NEW  SETTLEMENT 

systems  of  remuneration  by  piecework 
or  bonus  systems  in  which  the  em- 
ployer can  at  any  time  "  cut  rates " ; 
it  increases  the  bitterness  of  demar- 
cation disputes,  which  are  nearly 
always  complicated  by  the  craft  at 
the  lower  rate  being  preferred  by  the 
employer ;  and,  finally,  it  adds  new 
weight  to  the  danger  of  a  period  of 
unemployment,  when  employers  can 
seldom  refrain  from  attempting  re- 
ductions of  wages,  either  individual  or 
general. 

Thirdly,  there  is  the  helplessness  in 
which,  since  the  industrial  revolution, 
the  individual  workman  stands  in 
relation  to  the  capitalist  employer, 
and  still  more  in  relation  to  the  great 
joint  stock  company  and  the  national 
combine  or  trust.  It  was  to  remedy 
this  helplessness  that  Trade  Unionism 
arose.  The  workman  seeks  (a)  pro- 
tection against  caprice  or  tyranny, 
notably  at  the  hands  of  foremen ; 
(b)  some  opportunity  of  deciding,  in 
71 


RESTORATION  OF  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

concert  with  his  fellows  in  the  work- 
shop, as  to  the  conditions  in  which 
they  have  to  spend  their  working 
lives  ;  and  (c)  jointly  with  the  other 
workmen  an  equal  share  with  the 
employers  in  the  making  of  the  con- 
tract under  which  he  gives  his  services. 
This  desire  to  remedy  the  individual 
helplessness  of  the  workman  inspires 
his  insistence  on  Trade  Unionism ; 
and  his  resentment  of  the  employer's 
constant  wish  to  limit  the  power  and 
strength  of  the  union,  by  encouraging 
the  presence  of  non-unionists  or  even 
by  refusing  to  employ  unionists,  and  by 
fostering  the  divisions  between  unions. 

WAGE  ASPIRATIONS  AND  FREEDOM. 

Fourthly,  the  workmen  are  natur- 
ally not  contented  with  the  mere 
maintenance  of  existing  conditions 
and  the  prevention  of  unemployment. 
They  claim,  in  addition,  the  right  to 
progressive  improvements  in  wages, 
72 


WANTED— A  NEW  SETTLEMENT 

in  correspondence  with  the  increasing 
productivity  of  the  nation's  industry. 
They  claim,  in  particular,  that  the 
wages  and  other  conditions  of  the 
"  sweated  trades,"  and  of  all  those 
workers  still  below  anything  that  can 
be  called  a  living  wage,  should  as  soon 
as  possible  be  levelled  up  to  a  decent 
standard.  But  these  entirely  justified 
aspirations  for  improved  conditions 
of  life  do  not,  so  the  economists  tell 
us,  and  every  big  employer  confirms 
the  statement,  necessarily  involve  a 
diminution  in  the  profitableness  of 
industry,  either  to  the  State  or  the 
private  employer.  An  increase  in 
remuneration  is  as  welcome  to  the 
workmen,  whether  it  comes  from 
improvements  in  production  or  by 
way  of  diminution  of  the  capitalist's 
dividend. 

Fifthly,   we   have   to   face   the  fact 

that  the  workmen  expect  and   desire 

more  than  material  advantages,  more 

even  than  security  and  leisure.     They 

* 


EBSTORATION  OF  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

are  to-day  full  of  yearnings — none  the 
less  potent  because  they  are  vague, 
and  none  the  less  influential  because 
they  characterize  chiefly  the  more 
thoughtful  and  the  better  educated 
rather  than  the  half-brutalized  mass 
whom  employers  sometimes  think  of 
as  the  whole — for  a  higher  status  for 
labour,  in  the  industrial  as  in  the 
political  world.  This  does  not  mean 
profit-sharing  (an  exploded  futility 
which  is  simply  anathema,  and  must 
on  no  account  be  thought  of — its  mere 
mention  will  wreck  any  settlement), 
nor  yet  the  elevation  of  one  or  two 
tame  representatives  of  the  workmen 
to  the  board  of  directors,  where  they 
are  as  much  out  of  place  as  a  financier 
would  be  at  a  forge.  What  it  does 
mean  is  that  the  whilom  autocratic 
employer,  like  the  nineteenth-century 
king,  will  have  to  "grant  a  constitu- 
tion." 

Finally,  and  most  fundamentally  of 
all,  the  workmen  cling  to  their  freedom 
74 


WANTED— A   NEW   SETTLEMENT 

to  engage  or  not  to  engage  in  service 
with  whom  they  choose ;  and,  on  the 
expiration  of  their  wage  contracts,  to 
quit  their  employment,  if  they  like, 
whether  individually  or  in  concert  with 
each  other.  The  right  to  strike  must, 
it  is  clear,  remain  absolute. 


THE  EMPLOYER'S  STANDPOINT. 

On  the  other  hand,  employers  seek 
to  protect  themselves  against  any 
action  by  the  wage-earners,  whatever 
its  motive,  which  interferes  with  a 
progressive  increase  in  the  efficiency 
of  industry.  They  object  to  any 
limitation  of  the  workman's  output, 
however  effected  ;  to  any  restrictions 
which  hamper  the  installation  of  the 
best  machinery,  or  the  speed  at  which 
it  is  worked;  to  anything  which  pre- 
vents the  introduction  of  new  pro- 
cesses ;  and  to  any  limitation  on  their 
freedom  to  engage,  or  to  promote,  or  to 
put  to  any  kind  of  work  any  operative, 
75 


RESTORATION  OF  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

whatever  his  training,  age,  or  sex. 
All  this  is  with  a  constant  desire  to 
reduce  the  cost  of  production ;  and 
employers  rightly  assert  that  every 
such  reduction  is  a  national  gain. 

But  we  must  distinguish.  Em- 
ployers are  apt  to  confuse  a  reduction 
in  the  cost  of  production — that  is  to 
say,  in  the  human  effort  and  sacrifices 
involved — with  a  reduction  in  the  rates 
of  wages  that  they  have  to  pay.  Such 
a  reduction  of  wage  is,  of  course,  not 
a  reduction  of  the  cost  of  production 
at  all,  but  merely  an  alteration  in  the 
way  in  which  the  product  is  shared. 
It  is  not  necessarily,  or  even  usually, 
of  any  national  advantage  ;  and  it  may 
be,  and,  in  view  of  the  inadequacy  of 
current  wages  for  the  fullest  efficiency, 
in  most  cases  is,  a  national  disadvan- 
tage. To  the  workman  a  reduction 
of  wage  rightly  seems  to  be,  in  no  real 
sense,  a  reduction  in  the  cost  of  pro- 
duction, or  otherwise  than  a  dead  loss  ; 
it  seems  to  him,  at  best,  the  taking 
76 


WANTED — A  NEW   SETTLEMENT 

of  an  unfair  advantage  of  strength  ; 
and  it  may  amount  to  fraud  or  what 
is  very  near  theft.  There  must  clearly 
be  no  room,  in  the  new  settlement,  for 
such  pretended  reductions  in  the  cost 
of  production. 

Finally,  employers  lay  great  stress 
— not,  as  some  of  them  wrongly  ex- 
press themselves,  on  autocracy  in  the 
factory — but  on  full  freedom  to  dis- 
pense as  they  think  fit  with  the 
services  of  any  or  all  their  employees, 
at  the  expiration  of  their  wage  con- 
tracts. This  is  the  converse  of  the 
workman's  right  to  strike.  The  em- 
ployer will  naturally  not  give  up  his 
right  to  lock  out. 

Are  these  fundamental  requirements 
of  the  workmen  and  the  employers 
incompatible  with  each  other,  or  with 
the  national  interest?  Does  it  tran- 
scend the  powers  of  industrial  states- 
manship to  work  out  a  new  settlement 
for  industry  in  such  a  way  as  honestly 
to  secure  to  each  party  what  it  really 
77 


RESTORATION   OF  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

desires?  It  will  involve  the  abandon- 
ment of  some  cherished  traditions  of 
all  parties,  including  the  Government. 
It  must  necessarily  include  very  great 
concessions  to  Labour,  as  the  nation 
has  its  broken  word  to  redeem,  and 
not  merely  acquiescence  but  cordial 
acceptance  to  obtain.  But  it  need  not, 
it  is  submitted,  involve  either  detri- 
ment to  British  industry  or  the  em- 
ployers' ruin. 


78 


CHAPTER   V 

THE    FIVE    POINTS    OF    THE   NEW 
CHARTER 

WE   have  sketched   the  fund- 
amental     requirements     of 
the    workmen    and    of    the 
employers,   and   we    have   pronounced 
them,  under  certain  conditions,  capable 
of  reconciliation  without  detriment  to 
the  former  or   the   ruin  of  the  latter. 
Let  us   consider   the   terms  of  a  new 
industrial   charter.     We   may   arrange 
them  under  five  heads  : 

I.   The  Prevention   of   Unemploy- 
ment. 

Many   of  the   Trade   Union   condi- 
tions that  we   have  pledged  ourselves 
to   restore    have   for    their    object,   as 
we   have   seen,  to  protect  the  skilled 
79 


RESTORATION  OF  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

craftsmen  from  unemployment.  We 
cannot,  as  a  nation,  have  the  shame- 
ful audacity  to  refuse  to  restore 
these  conditions  without  offering  an 
equivalent  guarantee  against  unem- 
ployment. It  is  impossible  to  hope 
to  get  the  skilled  engineers,  for  in- 
stance, to  endure  without  revolt  the 
sight  of  labourers  and  women  doing 
engineers'  jobs  if  trained  engineers 
are  simultaneously  walking  the  streets 
in  search  of  work.  The  same  is  true 
of  other  trades.  The  first  and  the 
most  indispensable  condition  of  in- 
dustrial peace  under  the  new  settle- 
ment is  that  the  Government  shall 
undertake,  by  the  means  that  are 
thoroughly  understood  in  the  Board 
of  Trade,  to  prevent  the  occurrence 
of  unemployment,  in  the  same  sense 
that  it  prevents  the  occurrence  of 
cholera.  There  will  always  be  spo- 
radic cases,  but  any  continued  or 
widespread  unemployment  must  be 
henceforth,  not  merely  relieved  by 
80 


THE  FIVE  POINTS  OP  THE  NEW  CHARTER 

doles  or  futile  relief  works,  or  even 
by  insurance,  but  actually  prevented 
from  occurring.  This  can  be  done, 
as  soon  as  the  Government  chooses, 
by  nothing  more  recondite  than  such 
a  systematic  rearrangement  of  the 
necessary  works  and  orders  of  the 
Government  Departments  and  local 
authorities  over  each  decade  as  will 
maintain  approximately  level  from 
year  to  year  (including  the  fluctuat- 
ing wage  bill  of  capitalist  employers) 
the  aggregate  wage  total  of  the  king- 
dom.1 

A  PROGRAMME  or  PUBLIC  WORK. 

During  the  first  decade  after  peace, 
for  instance,  there  will  inevitably  be 
enormous  public  works  and  orders  of 
the  most  diverse  kind,  probably  en- 
tailing an  aggregate  expenditure  of 

x  See  the  whole  scheme  worked  out  in 
The  Prevention  of  Destitution,  by  S.  and  B. 
Webb  (Longmans,  6s.). 

81  v 


RESTORATION   OF  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

many  hundreds  of  millions  sterling. 
It  is  not  suggested  that  even  one 
piece  of  work  should  be  undertaken 
merely  for  the  sake  of  giving  em- 
ployment. But  if  these  inevitable 
public  works  and  orders  are  left  to 
be  executed,  as  they  have  hitherto 
been,  regardless  of  the  state  of  the 
labour  market,  we  shall  have  a  worse 
chaos  (and  more  financial  waste)  than 
ever.  If  the  Government  guarantees 
the  Trade  Unions  against  unemploy- 
ment, it  would  actually  save  money 
by  framing  a  ten  years'  programme 
and  giving  out  its  orders  for  all  the 
work  that  was  not  urgent  deliber- 
ately in  such  a  way  as  to  keep  the 
national  wage  total  approximately 
level  throughout  the  decade.  This 
need  cost  literally  nothing  (except 
the  "  intolerable  toil  "  of  taking 
thought)  to  the  Government  or  the 
nation. 

Such  a  policy  of  actually  prevent- 
ing the  occurrence  of  unemployment 
82 


THE   FIVE   POINTS   OF   THE   NEW   CHARTER 

will  be  as  advantageous  to  the  em- 
ployer as  to  the  workman.  The 
employers  will  gain  greatly  in  con- 
tinuity of  production ;  capital  would 
be  fully  employed  as  well  as  labour. 
What  they  must  forgo  is  the  inten- 
tion or  desire,  secretly  cherished  by 
the  less  reputable  among  them,  of 
taking  advantage  of  periods  of  un- 
employment to  worsen  the  condi- 
tions of  labour.  Any  such  worsen- 
ing, it  need  hardly  be  said,  is  against 
the  national  interest,  and  must  any- 
how be  prevented.  It  must,  how- 
ever, be  ruefully  admitted  that  the 
Trade  Unions  will  be  slow  to  believe 
even  the  most  solemn  Government 
declaration  and  pledge  that  this  policy 
of  preventing  the  occurrence  of  un- 
employment is  to  be  forthwith  adopted. 
It  is  part  of  the  penalty  for  our 
breach  of  faith  that  something  more 
specific  will  be  required,  in  addition, 
by  the  principal  unions.  In  view  of 
our  special  obligations  to  these  unions 
83 


EESTORATION  OF  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

in  the  skilled  crafts,  whose  regulations 
we  are  not  able  to  restore,  and  whose 
cordial  acquiescence  in  the  new  settle- 
ment we  have  to  procure,  the  Gov- 
ernment might  well  undertake  (in 
the  event  of  its  measures  to  prevent 
the  occurrence  of  unemployment  being 
so  far  unsuccessful  in  particular  trades) 
to  pay  to  the  Trade  Union,  as  liqui- 
dated damages,  and  quite  apart  from 
unemployment  insurance,  £l  per  week 
for  every  member  for  whom  the 
employment  exchanges  were  unable 
to  find  a  situation  under  the  condi- 
tions specified  in  Part  II  of  the 
National  Insurance  Act.  If  the  Gov- 
ernment honestly  and  energetically 
carries  out  the  proposed  pledge  to 
prevent  the  occurrence  of  unemploy- 
ment— which,  be  it  remembered,  is 
quite  practicable — such  a  supplemental 
guarantee  would  cost  the  Treasury 
nothing. 


THE  FIVE  POINTS  OF  THE   NEW  CHARTER 

II.  The    Maintenance   of    the 
Standard    Rates. 

Second  only  to  protection  from  un- 
employment, as  the  motive  for  the 
Trade  Union  conditions  that  we  are 
pledged  to  restore,  is  that  of  maintain- 
ing the  standard  rates  of  wages.  It 
is  clear  that  if  we  have  to  go  back  on 
our  word,  and  refuse  to  restore  these 
conditions,  we  must  in  common 
decency  undertake  that  there  shall  be 
nowhere  any  lowering  of,  or  nibbling 
at,  the  standard  rates.  Moreover,  it 
is  certain  that  any  attempt,  after  the 
war,  to  reduce  rates,  at  any  rate  so 
long  as  the  cost  of  living  remains  high, 
will  lead  to  serious  industrial  trouble. 
The  "good  employer,"  the  employer 
on  a  large  scale,  the  well-equipped  and 
competent  employer,  does  not  seek  any 
such  reduction ;  on  the  contrary,  he 
is  often  found  conceding  conditions 
superior  to  what  is  the  standard  in  his 
industry.  But  in  every  large  industry 
85 


RESTORATION  OF  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

there  are  low-paid  districts,  in  which, 
mainly  through  local  weakness  of 
organization,  rates  of  wages  are  below 
the  prevailing  standard.  Sometimes 
a  whole  class  of  work,  like  agricultural 
implement  making  or  sewing  machine 
making  in  the  engineering  industry, 
will  be  paid  at  rates  scandalously  be- 
low that  of  other  branches  of  the 
industry.  More  important  still,  there 
is  usually  a  fringe  of  employers  who, 
because  of  their  inferior  equipment,  or 
their  own  incompetence,  or  merely 
because  of  their  short-sighted  desire 
to  squeeze  the  last  drop  of  blood  out 
of  those  who  are  subject  to  them, 
habitually  refuse  to  pay  the  standard 
rates ;  and  thereby  often  harass  the 
better  employer  by  their  cut-throat 
competition. 


MINIMUM  NOT  MAXIMUM. 

Now,   in  order  effectively  to  main- 
tain the  standard  rate  in  any  industry, 

86 


THE   FIVE   POINTS  OF  THE   NEW   CHARTER 

the  facts  must  first  be  ascertained  and 
authoritatively  recorded  ;  and  a  precise 
standard  rate,  for  an  equally  precise 
normal  week,  either  uniform  through- 
out the  kingdom  for  each  class  of  work, 
or  varying  according  to  exactly  de- 
limited and  completely  coterminous 
geographical  districts,  must  be  defin- 
itely prescribed.  The  standard  rate, 
it  must  be  remembered,  is  never  any- 
thing but  a  minimum.  No  employer 
is  prevented  from  paying  more,  and, 
in  fact,  there  are  always  some  who  do 
pay  more,  whilst  no  workman  is  pre- 
vented from  asking  more.  There  is 
no  prevention  of  competition,  least  of 
all  any  attempt  to  give  the  inferior 
man  the  same  chance  as  the  superior. 
On  the  contrary,  all  experience  shows, 
as  the  economists  theoretically  demon- 
strate, that  the  fixing  of  a  uniform 
minimum  rate  actually  improves  the 
position  of  the  efficient  man  or  the 
man  of  good  character  relatively 
to  the  inefficient  or  the  "  boozer. " 
87 


RESTORATION  OP  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

Competition   is    limited   only   on   the 
downward  way. 

So  far  as  the  low-paid  trades  are 
concerned,  what  would  suit  best  would 
be  an  extension  of  the  Trade  Boards 
Act  (suitably  amended)  to  practically 
the  whole  range  of  industries  in  which 
the  great  bulk  of  the  operatives  get 
less  than  30s.  per  week.  The  coal- 
miners  have  now  their  own  arrange- 
ment on  a  similar  basis.  Much  the 
same  arrangement  would  be  acceptable 
to  the  railway  employees,  the  employees 
of  the  National  Government  and  the 
local  authorities.  Probably  all  occu- 
pations without  effective  Trade  Union 
organization  would  find  advantage  in 
such  a  plan. 

ASCERTAINMENT  OF  RATE. 

This  would  apparently  not  be  ac- 
ceptable to  the  skilled  and  well- 
organized  men  in  such  industries  as 
engineering  and  shipbuilding,  the 

88 


THE  FIVE  POINTS  OF  THE  NEW  CHARTER 

cotton  trade,  building,  furniture,  and 
many  small  but  strongly  combined 
crafts — which  are  just  those  to  which 
we  are  under  a  special  obligation  to 
make  good  our  broken  pledges.  We 
are  in  the  difficulty  that  we  cannot 
very  well  safeguard  their  rates  until 
it  has  been  definitely  ascertained  what 
they  are.  In  their  case  what  seems 
best  appears  to  be  the  formation  of 
a  joint  board  of  employers  and  em- 
ployed, to  which  all  employers  in 
the  industry  and  all  Trade  Unions 
claiming  to  include  any  considerable 
number  of  workers  in  it  should  be 
invited  to  take  part  for  this  special 
inquiry. 

This  joint  board  should  be  required, 
within  a  certain  time,  to  formulate 
for  the  whole  industry  a  precisely 
defined  standard  rate  (with  possible 
variations  for  particular  districts)  ap- 
plicable to  each  grade  and  section  of 
the  industry,  and  based  upon  the 
existing  practice  of  the  best  employer* 
89 


RESTORATION  OF  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

in  the  industry ;  in  the  event  of  the 
failure  of  the  board  to  agree  upon 
this  issue  of  fact  (what  standard  rate 
does,  in  fact,  represent  the  existing 
practice  of  the  best  employers)  the 
bare  issue  of  fact  to  be  decided,  after 
hearing  and  inquiry,  by  Sir  George 
Askwith.  This  is  not  compulsory 
arbitration.  There  is  no  suggestion 
of  any  decision  as  to  what  the  rate 
of  wages  ought  to  be.  All  that  would 
be  in  question  would  be  what  was, 
in  fact,  the  actually  prevailing  rate, 
disregarding  alike  the  15  per  cent,  of 
employers  who  paid  more  and  the 
15  per  cent,  who  paid  less.  The 
standard  rate  so  ascertained  for  the 
normal  week  (with  any  deductions 
and  allowances  provided  for)  should 
be  enforceable  as  a  minimum  on  all 
employers,  and  not  subject  to  reduc- 
tion on  any  excuse  whatever.  Any 
increases  in  the  wage  rates  or  improve- 
ments in  conditions  to  be  settled 
by  agreements  between  Trade  Unions 
90 


FIVE   POINTS   OF  THE  NEW   CHARTER 

and  employers'  associations  as  hereto- 
fore. 

PIECEWORK. 

With  regard  to  piecework,  it  is 
plain  that,  in  order  to  protect  the 
standard  rate,  the  employer  cannot 
be  allowed  to  fix  the  rates  (or  times 
of  bonus  systems)  as  he  chooses,  or 
merely  by  individual  bargaining.  The 
joint  board  settling  the  standard  rate 
must  settle  also  its  equivalent  in 
piecework,  as  is  habitually  done  by 
the  trade  boards.  This  should  be  on 
a  uniform  basis  of  time  and  a  quarter 
or  time  ard  a  third.  Where  the 
nature  of  tiie  work  forbids  a  standard 
list  to  be  made,  there  should  be  in 
all  cases  a  guarantee  that  no  work- 
man whom  the  employer  chooses  to 
put  on  piece  rates  should  receive  less 
than  time  and  a  quarter  or  time  and 
a  third  for  each  week,  deficiencies  not 
being  carried  forward.  Moreover,  the 
power  to  see  that  the  piecework  price 
91 


RESTORATION  OF  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

is  really  equivalent  to  the  standard 
time  wage  (at  time  and  a  quarter), 
so  far  as  the  ordinary  workman  is 
concerned,  working  at  the  normal 
speed,  under  normal  conditions,  shall 
be  entrusted  to  a  couple  of  salaried 
rate-fixers,  one  appointed  by  the 
employers'  association  and  the  other 
by  the  Trade  Union,  who  shall  be 
called  in  to  adjudicate  by  any  em- 
ployer or  any  workman,  and  whose 
decision  as  to  the  equivalent  piece- 
work rate  shall,  if  they  agree,  be  final. 
If  they  do  not  agree,  they  shall 
jointly  nominate  an  umpire,  with 
whom  they  shall  consult,  and  whose 
decision  shall  be  final.  The  necessary 
staff  of  rate-fixers  shall  be  appointed 
to  enable  all  disputes  to  be  settled 
without  delay,  work  proceeding  mean- 
time uninterruptedly.  This  is  the 
device  which  has  proved  successful, 
under  one  or  other  name,  among  the 
brassworkers  and  some  of  the  coal- 
miners. 

92 


THE  FIVE  POINTS  OF  THE  NEW   CHARTER 

There  would  need  to  be  many 
minor  safeguards  of  the  standard  rate, 
including : — 

(a)  Each  workman  to  be  paid  for  a 
full  week  until  definitely  discharged 
with  the  necessary  notice,  irrespective 
of  interruptions  due  to  weather,  short- 
age of  materials  or  orders,  stoppages 
of  machinery,  etc. ; 

(6)  Work  in  excess  of  the  normal 
week  to  be  paid  for  at  overtime  rates 
of  time  and  a  half  or  double  time ; 

(c)  No  deductions  to  be  made  for  fines, 
breakages,  bad  work,  etc. 


HI.   A  Constitution  for   Factory  and 
Industry. 

It  is  clear  that  the  British  workmen 
will,  after  the  war,  less  than  ever  con- 
sent to  sit  down  quietly  under  indus- 
trial autocracy.  There  are  employers 
who  are  claiming  to-day  that  they  are 
henceforth  going  to  be  "  masters  in 
their  own  works,"  and  that  they 
93 


RESTORATION  OF  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

intend  to  run  their  own  factories  as 
they  think  best.  That  way  lie  "  Ca' 
canny"  and  spasmodic  rebellions.  If 
the  Factory  Acts  and  Mines  Acts 
and  Shop  Hours  Acts  and  Trade 
Boards  Acts  do  not  serve  to  warn 
such  employers  that  the  day  for 
industrial  autocracy  has  gone  by,  they 
must  be  reminded,  not  only  of  their 
penal  liability  under  the  Munitions 
Acts,  but  also  of  the  specific  obliga- 
tions to  which  they  have  individually  set 
their  hands  in  their  contracts  with  the 
Government  entirely  to  restore  the 
pre-war  working  conditions  of  their 
factories.  They  cannot  be  allowed, 
even  if  they  would,  to  stand  in  the 
way  of  a  national  settlement.  They 
will  do  well  to  agree  quickly,  lest 
worse  things  befall  them. 

/It  is,  in  fact,  imperative  that  the 
new  settlement,  if  it  is  to  have  any 
chance  of  cordial  acceptance,  should 
include  a  definite  constitution,  both  for 

the  little  kingdom  represented  by  each 
94 


THE  FIVE   POINTS  OF  THE  NEW  CHARTER 

establishment,  and  for  the  industry  of 
which  it  forms  part.  Such  a  consti- 
tution must,  we  suggest,  include — 

(a)  Universal  acceptance  of  Trade 
Unionism  by  employers — making  it  a 
penal  offence  for  an  employer  to  have 
a  rule  against  engaging  trade  unionists, 
or  for  him  to  refuse  unreasonably  to 
receive  the  Trade  Union  officials  or  to 
negotiate  with  them. 

(6)  Workshop  committees  or  shop 
stewards  to  be  provided  for  in  every 
establishment  having  more  than  twenty 
operatives,  to  whom  the  employer  should 
be  required  to  communicate  at  least 
one  week  prior  to  their  adoption  any 
proposed  new  rules,  and  also  any  pro- 
posed changes  in  wage  rates,  piecework 
prices,  allowances,  deductions,  hours  of 
labour,  meal  times,  methods  of  working, 
and  conditions  affecting  the  comfort  of 
the  workshop. 

These  workshop  committees  should,  it 

is  suggested,  be  frankly  representative, 

partly  of  the  several  Trade  Unions  to 

95 


RESTORATION  OF  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

which  the  employees  may  ^belong, 
and  partly  of  the  employees  as  such, 
whether  members  of  Trade  Unions 
or  not.  Possibly  a  good  arrangement 
would  be  for  half  the  members  to 
be  nominated  in  due  proportion  on 
behalf  of  those  employees  who  were 
members  of  the  several  unions,  and 
the  other  half  to  be  elected  by  the 
whole  body  of  employees.  It  should 
be  the  duty  of  workshop  committees 
to  see  that  no  cutting  of  piecework 
prices  and  no  reduction  or  other 
"  nibbling  "  of  the  standard  rate  takes 
place,  or  any  worsening  of  conditions, 
and  in  any  such  case  both  to  make 
representations  to  the  employer  and 
to  communicate  with  the  Trade  Union 
concerned.  In  such  matters  its  func- 
tion should  be  purely  defensive.  The 
employer  would  not  be  required  to 
receive  and  consider  any  representa- 
tion asking  for  an  advance  in  wage 
rates  or  other  improvement  of  con- 
ditions unless  it  has  received  the 
96 


THE   FIVE  POINTS  OF  THE  NEW   CHAKTER 

endorsement  of  the  Trade  Union. 
The  works  committee  should  not  be 
permitted  to  take  any  action  contrary 
to  the  conditions  agreed  to  between 
the  employers  and  workmen  of  the 
district ;  and  its  constitution  must,  of 
course,  not  include  any  clause  or 
agreement  restricting  the  freedom 
of  employers  or  employed  as  to  strikes 
or  lock-outs. 

(c)  Can  we  add  to  this  Constitution  a 
clause  providing  for  a  deliberative, 
national  council  for  each  industry  ?  An 
interesting  proposal  has  been  made  by 
Mr.  Sparkes,  a  London  master  builder, 
for  a  permanent  "  Industrial  Parliament 
for  the  Building  Industry,"  to  be  com- 
posed of  twenty  members  appointed  by 
the  National  Associated  Building  Trades 
Council  and  a  like  number  representing 
the  Federation  of  Building  Trades  Em- 
ployers. Such  a  body,  meeting  regularly 
for  stated  sessions,  might  work  out 
greatly  improved  conditions  for  the 
industry.  He  suggests  that: 

"The  Parliament  would  not  concern 
97  G 


RESTORATION  OF  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

itself  with  the  adjustment  of  differences 
or  the  settlement  of  disputes.  Means 
already  exist  for  conducting  such  nego- 
tiations and  settling  such  issues.  The 
function  of  the  Parliament  would  not 
be  judicial  or  conciliatory,  but  construc- 
tive. 

"  The  agenda  of  the  Parliament  would 
be  determined  from  time  to  time  accord- 
ing to  circumstances  as  they  arose.  The 
following  matters  call  urgently  for  atten- 
tion from  such  a  joint  council  of 
employers  and  employed  in  the  building 
industry  at  the  present  moment: 

1.  Regularization  of  Wages. — The  pro- 

vision of  a  graduated  scale  of 
minimum  rates  designed  to  main- 
tain real  wages  as  nearly  as 
possible  identical  throughout  the 
country.  Subsequent  advances  to 
be  on  a  national  basis. 

2.  Unemployment. — To  acquire  a  fuller 

participation  in  the  control  of  the 
Board  of  Trade  Labour  Exchanges, 
and  to  supplement  their  work  by 
improved  organization  special  to 
the  building  trade  for  (a)  the 
decasualization  of  labour,  and  (6) 
98 


THE    FIVE   POINTS   OF  THE  NEW   CHARTER 

by  minimizing  the  fluctuation  of 
trade  by  intelligent  anticipation 
and  the  augmentation  of  demand 
in  slack  periods,  in  co-operation 
with  the  National  Housing  and 
Town  Planning  Council  and  the 
Local  Government  Board. 

3.  Employment    of   Partially  Disabled 

Soldiers. — To  consider  the  employ- 
ment of  partially  disabled  soldiers, 
and  to  ensure  that  the  pensions 
granted  by  the  nation  shall  not 
become  the  means  of  reducing  the 
standard  of  wages. 

4.  Technical  Training  and  Apprentice- 

ship. —  To  make  provision  for 
adequate  technical  training  for 
the  members  of  the  industry. 
Apprenticeship,  and  the  regulation 
of  the  conditions  of  entry  into  the 
industry. 

5.  Publicity.  —  To    issue    authoritative 

information  upon  all  matters 
whereon  it  is  deemed  desirable 
that  leaders  of  public  opinion,  the 
Press,  and  the  general  public  should 
have  exact  information. 
99 


RESTORATION  OF   TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

6.  Investigation  into  Possible  Lines  of 
Improvement.  —  To  investigate,  in 
conjunction  with  experts,  fore- 
seeable developments,  probable 
changes,  and  suggested  improve- 
ments, such  as : 

Scientific  management. 
Industrial  control  and  status  of 

labour. 
Improvements     in     design     and 

standards  of  workmanship. 
Closer  association  between  com- 
mercial  and  aesthetic  require- 
ments. 

Additions  to  this  list  would  be  as 
occasion  arose." 

There  would  be  many  advantages,  to 
employers  as  well  as  to  the  community 
as  a  whole,  if  such  a  deliberative  body 
in  each  industry  could  sit  regularly  to 
consider  its  requirements,  quite  irrespec- 
tive of  any  differences  between  masters 
and  men. 


100 


THE  FIVE  POINTS  OF  THE  N'EW  CHARTER 


IV.  No  Limitation  of  Output. 

The  foregoing  heads  of  the  Charter 
— the  Prevention  of  Unemployment, 
the  Maintenance  of  the  Standard  Rates, 
and  the  Grant  of  a  Constitution — will 
seem  to  some  employers  to  represent 
an  enormous  concession  to  labour. 
Yet  they  are  the  very  lowest  terms 
on  which,  if  we  fail  to  restore  the  pre- 
war network  of  Trade  Union  conditions 
in  accordance  with  our  plighted  word, 
there  is  any  chance  of  securing  the 
new  settlement  which  is  so  indispens- 
able to  efficient  production.  And  it 
must  be  remembered  that,  as  every 
competent  employer  knows,  none  of 
these  three  concessions  reduce  by  a 
single  penny  the  margin  between  cost 
and  price,  which  is  the  employer's  profit. 
On  the  contrary,  by  securing  continuity 
of  employment,  which  involves  con- 
tinuity of  profit-making  as  well  as  con- 
tinuity of  wage-paying,  the  aggregate 
101 


RESTORATION  OF  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

profits  of  each  decade  will  actually  be 
increased. 

What  is  most  vital  to  national 
efficiency,  as  it  is  to  the  employers' 
hope  of  profit,  is  to  get  rid,  fully  and 
permanently,  of  the  workman's  ten- 
dency silently  to  restrict  his  output. 
This  has  been  in  the  past  the  sullen 
reprisal  of  the  workshop  to  the  em- 
ployer's constant  attempts  to  cut  rates 
and  to  his  peremptory  turning  off  of 
hands  whenever  work  was  slack.  We 
can  get  rid  of  it  only  by  really  main- 
taining the  standard  rates  and  pre- 
venting unemployment.  Making  these 
two  concessions,  the  Government  can 
legitimately  ask  for  a  frank  abandon- 
ment of  a  practice  which  does  more 
harm  to  British  industry  than  all  the 
strikes  and  lock-outs. 

V.  Freedom  for  Every  Worker. 

(  Once    unemployment    is   prevented 
and    an    effective    guarantee    for    the 

102 


THE   FIVE   POINTS  OF   THE   NEW   CHARTER 

maintenance  of  the  standard  rate  is 
conceded,  together  with  a  constitu- 
tion for  the  factory  and  the  industry, 
the  claims  of  the  labourers  and  the 
women  to  remain  in  their  new  jobs, 
and  of  the  employers  to  organize  their 
factories  on  new  principles,  become 
tractable. 

{  In  return  for  these  concessions  the 
Government  may  fairly  ask  from  the 
Trade  Unions  complete  freedom  for 
the  employer  for  engaging  any  person 
whatever,  for  any  sort  of  work ;  com- 
plete freedom  for  any  person  to  do 
any  task  or  carry  out  any  process ; 
and  complete  freedom  for  the  intro- 
duction of  any  machinery  or  process.^ 
What  is  and  will  remain  indispens- 
able is  that  whoever  is  engaged  should 
receive,  not  what  wage  the  employer 
may  dictate,  but  the  full  standard 
rate  for  the  work,  as  authoritatively 
prescribed  and  enforced.  This  main- 
tenance of  the  standard  rate  for  the 
work  done,  of  course,  is  the  very 
103 


RESTORATION  OF  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

cornerstone  of  the  edifice.  If  em- 
ployers are  not  prepared  to  forgo  their 
previous  practices  of  "  cutting  rates  " 
and  striving  to  get  "  cheap  labour " — 
which  did  not  really  pay  them — they 
will  not  get  freedom  to  improve  the 
organization  of  their  factories. 

If  the  Government  asks  the  skilled 
crafts  to  forgo  the  restoration  of  their 
monopoly,  the  skilled  craftsmen  have 
an  irresistible  claim  to  have  (i.)  an 
absolute  guarantee  against  unemploy- 
ment ;  (ii.)  an  absolute  guarantee  that 
their  standard  rates  shall  suffer  no 
reduction,  now  or  in  the  future. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  these  two 
guarantees  are  effectively  secured  to 
them,  it  is  suggested  that  there  is  no 
reason  why,  in  the  interests  of  a 
national  settlement,  the  skilled  crafts 
should  not  abandon  their  monopoly, 
and  allow  the  employer  to  put  any 
person,  male  or  female,  to  any  work, 
conditional  on  (i.)  the  fixed  stan- 
dard rate  for  the  work  as  actually 
104 


THE  FIVE   POINTS  OF  THE  NEW  CHARTER 

performed  being  paid ;  and  (ii.)  on  the 
person  immediately  joining  the  Trade 
Union  concerned  (which  must,  of 
course,  be  open  to  that  person).  \ 
|  It  is  worth  remembering  that  free- 
dom of  choice  of  men  has  long  been 
conceded  by  the  cotton  spinners — 
one  of  the  strongest  and  most  suc- 
cessful of  unions — upon  exactly  these 
two  conditions.  The  London  Society 
of  Compositors  takes  up  practically 
the  same  line. 

Indeed  (if  effective  guarantees  are 
given  against  unemployment,  and 
against  any  reduction  of  the  standard 
rate),  the  concession  to  the  employers 
of  complete  liberty  of  choice  of  opera- 
tives is  really  advantageous,  in  leading 
to  a  constant  preference  for  the  more 
skilled  and  more  efficient  operative, 
and  so  to  an  actual  advancement  of 
skill. 

Here  then  are  the   "Five  Points" 
of  the  suggested  New  Charter  which 
employers  and  workmen  might  alike 
105 


RESTORATION  OF  TRADE  UNION  CONDITIONS 

be  asked  to  accept  as  the  basis  for 
that  new  settlement  of  industry  which 
the  new  industrial  revolution  and  the 
nation's  inevitable  failure  to  fulfil  its 
pledge  of  the  restoration  of  Trade 
Union  conditions  render  indispensable. 
It  is  only  by  frankly  putting  before  the 
Trade  Unions  a  large  and  sweeping 
scheme,  which  will  genuinely  safe- 
guard their  interests,  that  their  cordial 
acceptance  of  the  new  state  of  things 
can  be  secured.  Without  some  such 
new  settlement,  cordially  accepted  by 
all  parties,  the  future  is  dark. 


106 


APPENDIX 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

PARTICULARS  as  to  the  successive  action 
taken  with  regard  to  Trade  Union  con- 
ditions will  be  most  conveniently  found 
in  the  Labour  Year-Book  for  1916  (Fabian 
Bookshop,  25  Tothill  Street,  Westminster, 
price  2s.  6d.,  postage  5d.),  especially  Part  I, 
"Labour  and  the  War."  The  LabourYear- 
Book  for  1917,  to  be  published  in  a  few 
months,  will  contain  the  later  documents. 
See  also  Labour  in  War  Time,  by  G.  D.  H. 
Cole  (Bell,  2s.  6d.);  the  various  Reports 
of  the  Government  Committee  on  Pro- 
duction (February  16  and  20,  and  March  4, 
1915);  the  Munitions  of  War  Acts,  1915 
and  1916  ;  the  A.S.E.  Journal  (monthly) 
during  1915  and  1916  ;  the  Labour  Gazette 
(monthly).  The  following  Fabian  Tracts 
may  be  consulted ;  No.  176,  The  War  and 
the  Workers  (Id.);  No.  178,  The  War, 
Women,  and  Unemployment  (2d.)  ;  No,  181, 
When  Peace  Comes :  the  Way  of  Industrial 
107 


RESTORATION   OF  TRADE  UNION   CONDITIONS 

Reconstruction,  by  Sidney  Webb  (2d.). 
The  War  Emergency  Workers'  National 
Committee  (1  Victoria  Street,  London, 
S.W.)  has  published  The  Restoration  of 
Trade  Union  Customs  after  the  War:  a 
Statement  and  Analysis  of  the  Govern- 
ment Guarantees  (Id.),  and  The  Munitions 
Act  and  the  Restoration  of  Trade  Union 
Customs  (Id.). 

For  an  employer's  view  see  Some 
Aspects  of  Labour  and  its  Claims  in  the 
Engineering  Industry,  being  the  Presi- 
dential Address  to  the  Glasgow  University 
Engineering  Society  by  J.  R.  Richmond. 

After- the- war  conditions  are  dealt  with 
in  the  Garton  Foundation  Memorandum 
on  the  Industrial  Situation  after  the  War 
(Harrison  &  Sons,  Is.) ;  Great  Britain 
after  the  War,  by  Sidney  Webb  and 
Arnold  Freeman  (George  Allen  and 
Unwin,  Is.);  The  Elements  of  Reconstruc- 
tion, reprinted  from  The  Times,  with 
introduction  by  Viscount  Milner  (Nisbet 
&  Co.,  Is.).  See  also  the  War  Emergency 
Workers'  National  Committee  pamphlets 
on  The  Problem  of  Demobilization  (Id.), 
The  Prevention  of  Unemployment  (Id.), 
and  Report  of  the  Joint  Committee  of 
108 


APPENDIX 

Women's  Industrial  Organizations  (2d.). 
The  Fabian  Research  Department  will 
publish  shortly  a  detailed  report  on 
Women  in  the  Engineering  Industry. 

The  best  analysis  of  systems  of  piece- 
work remuneration,  and  of  the  very 
grave  economic  objections  to  it  where 
the  rates  are  not  safeguarded  by  law  or 
collective  bargaining,  will  be  found  in 
Industrial  Democracy,  by  S.  and  B.  Webb 
(Longmans,  12s.),  and  Methods  of  Indus- 
trial Remuneration,  by  D.  L.  Schloss 
(Williams  and  Norgate). 

All  the  above  can  be  obtained  at  the 
Fabian  Bookshop,  25  Tothill  Street, 
Westminster,  S.W. 


109 


fcsjmm  Jr*ss 

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WOKING  AND  LONDON 
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